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POEMS, 



BY 



H^ W^^P AR KER 



AUBURN: 

JAM£S M. ALDEN, 67 GENESEE ST. 

1850. 



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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year ISSO, 

BY JAMES M. ALDEN, 

In the Clerk's Office of the Bistrict Court for tha Northern 

District of New York. 



X 



K«APP 4i PECK, PRINTEUS. 
AL'BLBK, K. T. 



Li' 



"Do you condemn these yerses I have written, "■ 
I Because they tell no story false or true ! 

What, though no mice are captured by a kitfceni 

F 

May it not leap and play as grown cats do, 
Till its claws come ? Prithee, for this one time 
Content thee with a visionary rhyme." 

Proem to *' Witch of Atlas P 

And "with the fairy tales of science." 

" Locksley Hall." 



% 



CONTENTS, 



CREATIONS. 




TttE Poets' Reveille .... 


. 11 


Vision of Shelley's Death . 


27 


The Hdnter's Destinies .... 


. 33 


The Loom of Life .... 


38 


City and Country 




Part I. — The Youthful Impulse 


. 43 


Part II. — The Warning Dream 


47 


A Study 


53 


The Shadow 


55 


A Happy Day . . . . • 


. 61 


The Dead-Watch .... 


67 


" More Light" . ... 


. 71 



6 contents. 

Sonnets 

California 73 

A Reply . . . . .' . . 7 i 

To A Blonde : . • . • 75 

A PlCTUKE 76 

Two Pictures 77 

Autumn Snow 78 

Three Spirits 79 

To No One ...... 80 

Mt. Holyoke 81 

A Sunbeam ...*.. 82 

Love's Sunset 83 

Love's Alchemy ...... 86 

To A Flower, etc ' . 100 

The New Planet. — A Song .... 103 

The Removal . . . . . . 107 

The Elm-Sylph Ill 

The Iceberg • 119 

Aurora ; 122 

Well's Falls 125 

Condolence 127 

The City of the Dead .... 129 

Omens 132 

" Oh, IP 'tis wisdom," etc 133 



CONTENTS. 7 

IMITATIONS. 

Floralie 137 

The Lone Island ..... 141 

Tagucanic Falls ...... 144 

PROSE-POEMS. 

New Wonders of the Mammoth Cave . i 153 

An Underground Railroad .... 169 

Travels in a Dew-Drop .... 192 

Von Blitzen's Experiment .... 202 

Legend of the Lone Island .... 219 

MouLTiNa of Mind 224 

The LTniverse of Spirit «... 231 



'Please, icith a peyicil, 

On page 44, line llth, after "borrow'' insert "a beauty." 

'• " 51, " 6th, after "gave'' insert "me." 

" " 87, last line, after "am"' insert "1.'' 

'• " 130, line Kith, for "thro' the trees" write "in the leaves." 

" " 144, •' llt:i, after "And it" ineert "is." 

Note. — The other few errors will correct themselves; the excuse for them 
J8, the book was required to be printed in the space of three weeks, and the 
author could not see a 'revised proof.' At the hint of another, it way be 
here intimated ihat the poem "More Ligl.t" is a pleasantry, suggested by 
an engraving ; and it h.is no more reseuib'ance in its aim than in its e.xe- 
cution, to the well-known poem 'Excelsior.'' It may b.i added, also, tlait 
the •• Vision of Shelley's Death" coincides with the opinion, now prevail- 
ing, that Shelley was a literal monomaniac on the subject of Christianity. 



CREATIONS. 



THE POETS' REVEILLE. 



Rap ! rap ! at the tapping of the drum, 
What a host of living poets come ! 
From the north and south, the east and west, 
In a thousand sorts of armor drest, 
Mounted and afoot, in twos and threes, 
In battalions, troops and companies, 
On they press, an endless motley train, 
To the authors' boundless battle-plain. 
Every month now brings its rhyming score ; 
Let them come ! — the merrier the more ; 
Let them form in line wherever found. 
Roll the drum and let the trumpet sound ! 



12 THB poets' BETEILLB. 

Long enough the world has seen a race 
Sitting on the heights of power and place, 
rilling all the valleys with a throng * 

That, in pride of reason, scorn the song 
Flowing from the heart in tones subdued, 
Like the murmurs of a solitude. 
They are prosy men of common sense, 
Who have ears alone for jingling pence ; 
But their vaunted rule shall come to naught, 
At the touch of words — the flash of thought. 
What is false and foul to them is due ; 
We will throne the Beautiful and True ; 
We will vote them down, and laugh them down. 
Seize the power and gold, and wear the crown. 
When the swarming poets have their way, 
Then the world will see a merry day I 

Beat ! beat ! at the greeting of the drum, 
Let the countless tuneful army come ! 
Fight with iron hymns like Cromwell's host ; 
At your paper, you are at your post ; 
Every poet-knight may have his page ; 
Children-poets have their cutting edge ; 



THE posts' BEVEILLB. 13 

Pour around your volumes, dense and hot — 
Clouds of smoke, if you are out of shot ; 
Fire away, like Indians, under cover. 
While around the enemy you hover. 
Printers and the Press will furnish all — 
' Shooting-stick,' and ' carriage,' and a ' ball,' 
' Cannon,' ' pica' for your pikes and staves, 
And a ' coffin ' for your soldier-graves. 

Rouse, then ! form in ' column' and in ' line,' 

All who have the faculty divine. 

Turn ! turn ! still wo beat the poets' drum, 

Still we welcome you — there yet is room ! 

With such weapons as you have at hand. 

For your rights and writings bravely stand. 

Choose your martial music at your pleasure — 

Alexandrine or heroic measure ; 

Tribrachs for your pibrochs sound at will ; 

Ana-paest may find a lover still ; 

Blank verse is not always blank of shot, 

And a ballad adds a ball, I wot. 

So with poetry for musketry. 

Pasquinade a cannonade shall be. 

And a sentry, brave as Sancho Panza, 



14 THE poets' reveille. 

Shout his " Stand, sir ! " in his halting stanza. 

Courage, hearts ! and stoutly march along, 
Strong in numbers, in our leaders strong — 
Leaders ? — look you, while I just rehearsa 
Some of these in quick and jingling verse — 
Not in order of their rightful place, 
But as in the crowd we catch a face. 

First, an honored chief, behold a Bryant, 
Who, without "a stretching," is a giant, 
Not with knotty club and lion's hide, 
But, a polished sabre by his side, 
And in Yankee reojimentals dight. 
He will calmly rule the stormy fight. 

Next, the poet of 'Evangeline,' 

In an olden suit of armor, clean 

And so burnished that you see your face. 

Ay, and heart, as clear as in a glass. 

Braver knight, more gallant, pure and true. 

Never to the shock of battle flew. 

Willis, yonder, on a subtle pacer 



THE poets' reveille. 15 

Glides along as fast as any racer. 

On his shield is many a bright device ; 

Feathers of the Bird of Paradise 

Flaunt adown his helmet for a plume. 
Gayest in the field and drawing-room, 
He has won and he can wield in war 
That same fabled Eastern scimitar 
Magic-tempered, and of edge so keen, 
It will cleave a foe, unfelt, unseen ! 
General Morris with him, side by side. 
Sworn to die together, forth they ride — 
Morris who our hearts can well inspire 
"With his jeweled sword and silver lyre. 

Now, make room for Lowell — room for three. 

For, with power to change his nature, he 

Can assume the droll militia-man, 

Or can dash — a trooper in the van, 

Charging on the critics at a canter ; 

Or can lay a^ide his stinging banter, 

" Turn and wind a fiery Pegasus," 

And, astride that courser fabulous. 

Mount the skies and, scorning spur or wliip, 

" Witch the world with noble horsemanship." 



18 THE POETS BEVEILLB. 

Dana, once, upon a spirit-horse, 
Followed all the windings of Remorse ; 
Now he stands apart, a hero tall, 
With a word of sympathy for all 
Who are warring with a jarring life, 
And are weary of its wasting strife. 

Surgeon of the poet-army — Holmes 
Nest is here to fire his squibs and bombs ; 
_ Skilled in all explosive chemistry, 
He can " slay with laughter," healthy glee, 
Double-shots his guns, and, sure to hit. 
Plays away a battery of wit. 

Saxe, too, comes with sacks of powder-puns- 
Ammunition for a hundred guns ; 
And he wields with ease his sature's sword. 
Every stroke a smoothly cutting word. 

Unlike them, bold Whittier mounts a steed, 
All the wing'd artillery to lead, 
And with vollies of his red-hot rain. 
Like a whirlwind sweeps the battle-plain. 



TiiE poets' reveille. 17 

Halleck garnered glory with the Greeks ; 
Strong his arm and weather-worn his cheeks ; 
And his hand is trained alike to throw 
Humor's torch, or strike the lyric blow. 

Street, too, takes the war-path — knows the trail ; 
His foot, glance and arrow never fail ; 
With an eagle eye and panther's tread, 
Forest, lake and mountain he will thread, 
Leading, cheering us with whoop and dance 
Thro' the mazes of a wild romance. 

Hoffman is no less a hunter true ; 
Woodland glades he loves, and waters blue ; 
Is at home with rifle, rod and oar, 
Knows the Indian's guile and fairy lore. 
And the camp-fire's hour he wings along 
With a legend or a sparkling song. 

Tuckerman, the perfect gentleman, 
Represents the court of " good Queen Anne ; " 
Far too few the scions of his race — 
Men in velvet cloaks and golden lace, 



18 THE poets' KEVEILLE. 

Who can use tlieir swords witli skill and grace. 

Bayard Taylor, witli his Alpine staff, 
Better loves the higher air to quaff, 
Climbs the mountain's dizziest peak, to light 
Beacons that shall redden on the night. 
Cheer the longing spirit like a star, 
And awake the world to noble war. 

Emerson, the prose-poet, should be here, 
Lending us his Grecian soul and spear ; 
But he won't keep step, and hurries so, 
He is out of sight — so let him go ! 

Oh, one's drumdom for a muster-roll. 

Just to name each noble poet-soul ! 

How their very names the drum-head jars ! — 

•if 

Tragic Boker, bright with princely stars ; 
Wallace, striding like a modern Mars ; 
Lord, not worse for honorable scars ; 
Hoyt, a David slinging polished spars ; 
Matthews, tempered in his valiant wars; 
Sargent, with his ships and hardy tai's ; 
Cutter, rushing in his lightning cars ; 



THE poets' reveille. 19 

Sprague who puff!s his excellent " cigars;" 
Hirst, and other well-drilled regulars. 
Field the " Post of Honor" bravely chooses ; 
Read is champion of all the Muses ; 
Bulkley sings a stirring battle-song ; 
Prentice rouses, silent far too long ; 
Hosmer, with his Indian braves, is here. 
And the knightly Simms, without a fear. 

Those and others, each a truer man 
Than the marshals of the Corsican ; 
But what ragged multitudes they lead — 
Hundreds to a single blade or steed ; 
Many noble youth, but what a rout 
Follow with their rabble song and shout ! 
Some with nothing but a load of words ; 
Some with pop-guns, whistles, wooden swords, 
Rocking-horses, paper caps and drums, 
China-crackers, rockets, sugar-plums ; 
And a crippled s(][uadron limp behind — ■ 
FalstafF's men were not more lame and blind. 

Let them come ! — the halt shall leap to life, 
And the young shall strengthen for the strife, 



20 THE poets' reveillb. 

And — but hark ! — what mean the signal guns ?— 
Ah, the glorious troop of Amazons ! 

Sigourney, by right of reverend years, 
At their head — a saintly form — appears ; 
Hers the gentle wisdom to repress 
Something of their wayward youth's excess ; 
Cheer .the sad, and soften down the gay, 
And with counsel calm to rule the fray. 

Osgood, joying in her courser's prance, 

Twines with flowers and lifts her shining lanco ; 

Never weary, full of love and hope. 

Swifter than the airy antelope, 

On she bounds, her song as sweetly clear 

As the music of a sinless sphei'e. 

Next, with visor down, is ' Greenwood ' Clarke ; 
Forth she rides — a Joan bold of Arc ; 
Clad in ringing mail from head to heel. 
Like her sword, her nerves are finest steel ; 
On her mettled charger best at home, 
Well she loves him for his fire and foam. 
Dares the battle's front, the stormy siege. 



THE POBTS' EEVEILLE, 21 

And to self alone she lives in liege. 

No less brave in saddle, strong in heart, 
Fanny Kemble hurls the sonnet's dart ; 
Loud she lifts a golden-bugle voice. 
That would make the heart of Death rejoice ; 
Shaming pale Macbeths from craven fears, 
Many a Brutus with her tone she cheers. 

But the time would fail us, if we told 
Half the Beauty in the lists enrolled : 
Mowatt, who, than all her tragic mien, 
Acts in life the better heroine ; 
Hale, whose slender hands can lightly wield 
" Iron" battle-axe and shining shield ; 
Gould and Ellet, all whose thought contains 
Blood descended from our patriot veins. 
Lynch, the fearless Miriam of the band, 
Rains from cymbals music sweet and grand ; 
And with her exult the sister Careys, 
Bold as Judiths, gentle as the Maries. 
Like a Milton's warring angel, Eames 
Shows of Milton's genius milder gleams ; 



22 THE poets' KEVEILIiB. 

Welby, on her tameless prairie steed, 
Glories ia her hair-disheveling speed ; 
Fairest Oakes, with holy hymning lyre, 
Like an angel wakes the golden wire ; 
" Edith May" — ^beneath her dark eye's lash, 
Lightnings of a lofty spirit flash ; 
; And the sweet Cayuga warbler — "Alice," 
With the dew of feeling in her chalice ; j 
Allin, too, a form that yet may rise. 
With Minerva's spear and Juno's eyes. 
These — and each a Magyar heroine — 
These, and all their flocking troops, are seen ; 
Let us, with a drum-beat long and loud. 
Cheerily salute the lovely crowd ! 
Allied with so many queenly Powers, 
We may shout — •' The victory is ours !" 

Sound ! -sound ! at the pounding of the drum, 

Let the aspirants of glory come ! 

We are strong ; and o'er the rolling sea, 

Is another banded company ; 

They are strong, and subtly skill'd to fight 

For the worker's hope — the dreame7'^s right. 



THE poets' reveille. 23 

And what leaders ! — Browning and the Heart 
Linked with his to share his love and art ; 
Jasmin, Lamartine, and Freiligrath, 
And a train that follow in their path. 
These and others are by one Soul led — 
He the flower of chivalry and head — 
Arthur of our modern Faerie-Qaeen, 
Towering from the host his helm is seen. 
All of gold ; and nets of mail enfold 
(Every ring and scale of purest gold) 
All his manly form ; and straight his blows 
Strike like liojhtnino; thro' and thro' his foes ; 
Sworn to beauty, truth and woman, none 
Is so much a host as Tennyson. 

Beat ! beat ! at the booming of the drum, 
Let the lovers all of beauty, come ! 
We are strong, and silent with us tread 
Viewless spirits of the laureled Dead. 
(Lightly, lightly touch the muffled drum ! — 
Softly, sadly let its music hum !) 
Nay, look up ! look up ! the glowing throng, 
With a distant burst of angel-song, 
Suddenly appear and fill the sky 1 



24 TUE poets' eeveillb. 

To our aid the sainted poets fly, 
As with Sisera did fight the stars — 
As the gods were mixed iu human wars. 
See them ! — rank on rank they reach away 
From the portals of immortal day, 
With their seraph spears and sounding lyres ; 
Near at hand, they shine like pillared fires — 
Far away they glitter in the air. 
Bright as spangles in a noonday glare ; 
Still they come, with lustrous forms, and eyes 
Radiant with the light of Paradise. 
Let us join their grand triumphant song 
With a hymn ten thousand voices strong. 
Like the light that shone to Constautine, 
Such a glory is our victory's sign ; 
And the vision who can disbelieve, 
Since the dead in song and presence live ? 

Wake ! wake ! at the shaking of the drum. 
Let the yoiing and swarming poets come !' 
Lift your banners high your heads above, 
Blazoned with the motto — " Truth and Love." 
By the memory of the gifted dead 
Who have died for lack of love and bread ; 



THE poets' reveille. 25 

By the social wrongs that sunder souls ; 
By the mockery that ou you rolls ; 
By your hate of bigotry and pride — 
Forward ! with your instinct for a guide. 
And aim high — oh, leave the beaten track ; 
Outward Nature and the Passions lack 
None to picture every varied phase. 
Leave the surface and the trodden ways 
AVherc the gold-dust all is sifted out^ 
And the thirsty sands are blown about ; 
Delve for purer ore in Nature's hearty 
Melt and mould it with a perfect art — 
Nay, ascend, and conquer realms ideal, 
Till the vision heralds in the real-^ — 
Till the spirit triumphs over sense, 
Reigning in its own high eminence. 

Roll ! roll ! with the rolling of the drum, 
Shout the harvest of your laurels home ! 
Soon we will outnumber all the throng 
That are dead to beauty, truth and song ; 
Soon the tide of battle will have turned. 
And the rights of finer souls be earned. 
Then the world will be as we would have it ; 

2 



26 THE poets' keveille. 

Then shall custom never more enslave it. 
Thinkers shall be rich, and wooden men 
Hew the wood and draw the water, then ! 
Kindred souls will always find each other ; 
All acknowledge Nature as our mother ; 
Truth to her and self will ne'er be treason ; 
Romance will be held the truest Reason ; 
Visions will be true, and fancies, fact ; 
And the world be free in speech and act. 
All men shall be poets — poet-teachers, 
Poet-farmers, artists, merchants, preachers ; 
Poet-lawyers, statesmen, presidents, 
And poetic laws and governments. 
Roll ! roll the thunder of the drum — 
Soon a PoETOCRACY will come. 



VISION OF SHELLEY'S DEATH. 



The wIqcI was freshening across the bay, 
A looming storm shut out the sultry day^ 
And wilder grew the distant billows' play. 

The nearer calm a single sail beguiled, 
And at the helm, with features fair and mild, 
Sat one whom men have called Eternal Child. 

A breath — a breeze — the tempest strikes the sail ; 
It fills — it stoops, and, swift and free as frail, 
It flies a winged arrow from the gale. 

A precious boat ! — may angels speed it right ! 
The world, in that thin shell and form as slight. 
Has all its hold upon a soul of might. 



28 VISION OF Shelley's death. 

He lay reclined in noonday dreams no more, 
He gazed no longer at the purple shore, 
Nor mused on roofing skies and ocean's floor. 

The wizard storm invoked a truer dream — 
Had kindled in his eye its proudest gleam, 
And given his eagle soul a grander theme. 

No sign of craven fear his lips reveal ; 
He only feels the joy that heroes feel, 
When lightnings flash and jarring thunders peal. 

The boat dipt low ; his foot was on the helm ; 
The deck a throne — the storm his genial realm, 
He dared the powers that nature's king o'erwhelm. 

The gentle eye that turned from man away. 
Now flashed in answer to the flashing spray. 
And glanced in triumph o'er the foaming bay. 

And as aloft the boat a moment hung. 

Then down the plunging wave was forward flung, 

His own wild song — " The Fugitives " — he sung : 



VISION OF Shelley's death. 29 

Said he, " And seest thou, and hearest thou? " 
Cried he, " And fearest thou, and fearest thou? 
A pilot bold, I trow, should follow now." 



The sail was torn and trailing in the sea, 
The water flooded o'er the dipping lee, 
And clomb the mast in maddest revelry. 

It righted with the liquid load, and fast 

Went down ; the mariners afloat were cast. 

And louder roared and laughed the mocking blast. 

A moment, and no trace of man or spar 
Was left to strew the path that, near and far, 
Is whirled in foam beneath the tempest's car. 



30 VISION OF Shelley's death. 

A moment more, and one pale form appeared, 
And faintly looked the eyes ; no storm careered, 
And all the place witli mystic light was sphered. 

Around liim slept a circling space of wave ; 
It seemed the crystal pavement of a cave. 
And all about he heard the waters rave. 

He saw them waving like a silken tent — 
Beheld them fall, like rocks of beryl rent, 
And rage like lions from a martyr pent, 

A sudden life began to thrill his veins ; 

A strange new force his sinking weight sustains, 

Until he seems released from mortal chains. 

He looked above — a glory floating down — 
A dazzling face and form — a kingly crown. 
With blinding beauty all his senses drown. 

As tearful eyes may see the light they shun, 
As veiling mists reveal the clear-shaped sun, 
He knew the crucified, transflgured One. 



TI310N OF Shelley's death. 31 

In that still pause of trembling, blissful sight. 
He woke as from a wild and life-long night, 
And through his soul there crept a holy light. 

A blot seemed fading from his troubled brain — 

A doubt of God — a madness and a pain, 

Till upward welled his trusting youth again , — 

Till upward every feeling pure was drawn, 
As nightly dews are claimed again at dawn, 
And whence they came are more gently gone. 

He gazed upon those mercy-beaming eyes, 

Till recognition chased away surprise. 

And he had faith from heaven and strength to rise — 

To rise and kneel upon the glassy tide, 

While down the Vision floated to his side, 

And stooped to hear what less he said than sighed : — 

"Oh Truth, Love, Gentleness ! — I wooed and won 
Your essences, nor knew that ye are One ; 
Oh crowned Truth, receive thine erring son !" 



32 VISION OF Shelley's death. 

A spirit-touch was laid upon his soul ; 

Like pallid ashes from a living coal, 

His mortal clay fell oflf and downward stole. 

The Soul and Vision took their upward flight, 
And lingering angels gathered up the light 
That lay — a spell upon the tempest's might. 

The gentle one, whose thought alone was wrong- 
The Eternal Child amidst a cherub-throng, 
"Was wafted to the Home of Love and Song. 



THE HUNTER'S DESTINIES. 



I. 

Nisut's crescented and spangled dome 
O'erarched with love, and fed with dewy light, 

A garden-hid Virginian home. 
The airs of summer, in their elfin flight, 

Stept lightly on the vine-rose leaves 
That made a low veranda's damask woof, 

And crept in wreaths above the eave?, 
And fell in shade along a silvered roof. 

AVithin, the moonlight and the bloom, 
Thro' open lattices that reached the ground — 

Faint lights and sweets — relieved the gloom ; 
And both were blended with as faint a sound 

That echoed from a festal hall. 

That chirruped from the crickets in the earth, 

2* 



34 THE hunter's destinies. 

And stole from maize-fields green and tall — 
From tinkling tambourine, and song and mirth. 

Without — a garden thro' the open door ; 
Within — a nodding nurse and sleeping child 

That lay upon the figured floor, 
Where flowers of moonlight in the darkness smiled. 

In slumber mild, 
Its dainty face with dream-drops beaded o'er, 
Reposed The Child. 



II. 

The night wore on ; the nurse had gone 
To find the far-off music thro' the trees ; 

Dark lines of level cloud were drawn 
Across the sinking moon ; and with the breeze 

There came a rising, rushing sound — 
Wild voices came, but not of midnight brawl ; 

And thro' the casements, and around 
Where fading moonbeams crept from floor to wall, 

Dim forms were gliding in the room, 
Like lights in darkness, shadows in the light ; 

They were the shapes of Hope and Doom. 
And first, with features fevered with delight, 



THE udnter's destinies. 35 

And eyes with dreamy brilliance filled, 
Young Romance breathed a tale of life and love 

That thro' the infimt's spirit thrilled. 
Next, bold Adventure came and bent above 

The couch ; his clarion-voice was heard ; 
He shouted, laughed and kissed the slumbering 
child, 
And passed. The fairest and the third 
That came and knelt, was Freedom, glad and wild. 

By dreams beguiled, 
Its dimpled cheeks with sleeping laughter stir'd, 
Still slept the child. 



III. 

A moment, silence reigned again ; 

And then a magic music charmed the air, 
And thro' the door a joyous train 

Flew in, with cymbal clash and torches' flare- 
Mad Frolic, Sport and dancing Joy, 

Delirious Pleasure, License," lavish Wealth, 
Loose Beauty with her wanton Boy, 

And Revel pale, in hand with rosy Health. 
They chased about — a merry rout — 



86 THE nUNTEE's DESTINIES. 

And kissed the child, and wet its lips witli wine — 

Then, with a shout, they all flew out. 
The moon had touched the hills, in its decline, 

And shriller sang the stormy air. 
A spectral form stole in — another came, 

And then a third, with hao-o-ard hair, 
And hollow cheeks, and glaring eyes of flame — 

Mad Hazard, crazed with golden dreams, 
Dark Murder with a dagger 'neath his cloak, 

The lip of Hate that still blasphemes, 
Foul Lust and Wrong ; they stooped — the words 
they spoke 

Its slumbers broke. 
And with a fear-flushed face and piercing screams. 
The child awoke. 



IV. 

The years flew swiftly by ; the child 
Had grown a brawny man, and wandered far — 

A hunter in the western wild — 
A hero-name beneath the evening star. 

Beside his nightly fire, he slept ; 
It shone on gleaming gun and fringed dress, 



THE hunter's destinies. 37 

And flamed before the wind tbat swept 
Thro' roaring hills and groaning wilderness. 

In pauses of the gusty storm, 
The hoot and howl and snarl of tameless things 

Were heard, and here and there a form 
Stole out from gloom, or passed on rushing wings ; 

Revenge came near, but stayed his knife, 
Repelled by long accustomed, savage fear ; 

And hideous shapes of spirit-life 
Danced round the fire with demon laugh and leer ; 

And all the forms that gathered round 
His cradle, came again to bless and ban ; 

And ghostly victims on him frowned, 
Or stooped from air his fated face to scan. 

With features wan, 
His weary senses drowned in sleep profound, 
Reposed The Man. 



THE LOOM OF LIFE. 



I stood within a spacious room 

Where many busy weavers were^ 
And each one played a lofty loom, 

With ceaseless and with noisy stir ; 
Warp and roller, spools and reels — 

It was a mazy scene to view, 
While slow revolved the groaning wheels. 

And fast the clashing shuttles flew. 

Unnumbered threads of brilliant dyes, 
From beam to beam all closely drawn. 

Seemed dipt in hues of sunset skies, 
Or steeped in tints of rosy dawn, — 

Or as a thousand rainbows bright 
Had been unraveled, ray by ray, 



THE LOOM OF LIFE. 39 

And each prismatic beam of light 
Inwoven with the fabric lay. 

Quick — quick the clicking shuttles flew, 

And slowly up the web was rolled, 
Sprinkled with purple, red and blue, 

And strewed with stars of yellow gold ; 
The quaint device came forth so true, 

It seemed a work of magic power. 
As if by force of Nature grew 

Each imaged leaf and figured flower ! 

I sat within a silent room, 

While evening shadows deepened round, 
And thought that life is like a loom 

With many-colored tissues wound, — 
Our souls the warp, and thought a thread 

That, since our being first began, 
Backward and forth has ever sped, 

Shot by the busy weaver — man ! 

And all events of changing years 

That lend their colors to our life. 
Though oft their memory disappears 



40 THE LOOM OF LIFE. 

Amid our pleasures and our strife, 
Are added fibres to the warp, 

And here and there they will be seen, 
Djed deep in joy or sorrows sharp — 

For we are all that we have been . 

The loves and hopes of youthful hours, 

Though buried in oblivion deep. 
Like liidden threads in woven flowera 

Upon the web will start from sleep. 
And one loved face we sometimes find 

Pictured there, with memories rife, — 
A part of that mysterious mind 

Which forms the endless warp of life. 

Still hour by hour the tissue grows, 

(Memory is its well known name,) 
Stained bright with joys or dark with woes, 

The pattern never twice the same ! 
For its confused and mingled gleams 

Display so little care or plan, 
In heedless sport the shuttle seems 

Thrown by the maddened weaver — man ! 



THE LOOM OF LIFB. 41 

And if our conscious waking thought 

Weaves out so few and worthless ends, 
Much more a tangled woof is wrought 

When dream with dream commingling blends ; 
The toilsome scenes of weary days, 

By night lived o'er, at morn we see 
Made monstrous in a thousand ways, 

Like fabled shapes on tapestry. 

And as the weaver's varied braid, 

When turned, a double wonder shows — 
The lights all changed to sombre shade, 

While all the dim then warmly glows ; 
So, many scenes we think most bright. 

And many deemed most dark and cold. 
Will seem inverted to our sight, 

When we our future life behold ! 

For thought ends not — it reaches on 
Thro' every change of world or clime, 

While of itself will ever run 

The restless flying shuttle — time ! 



42 THE LOOM OF LIFE. 

And wlien tlie deep-imprinted soul 
Shall burst the chambers of the tomb, 

Eternity will forth unroll 

The work of this our wondrous loom ! 



CITY AND COUNTRY. 



PART I. THE YOUTHFUL IMPULSE. 

Away to the city ! — this rural repose, 

"With its slumberous sounds and motionless sights, 
To the fiery spirit a weariness grows, 

And tires with its ever-returning delights. 

A pageant of splendor that never is past, 

Though fair as a sunset, is familiar and mean ; 

And the glories of Nature are common at last, 
If always before us and never unseen. 

Her use is to quicken to healthier life, 
And freshen the spirit when weary of toil ; 

We are born to go forth and to mingle in strife. 
And not be rooted like trees in the soil. 



44 CITY AND COUNTRY. 

Her use is to feather the arrows of thought, 
And wing with an image the powerful word, 

When crowds by the tongue into passion are wrought, 
Or the world, by the pen or the pencil, is stirred. 

She hints at a spiritual beauty and grace, 
That soften the soul in activity strong ; 

But the flashes of glory that play on her face, 
Are gone, if we gaze at the vision too long. 

And why should we treasure the symbols of sense, 
If never to use them in battling with mind? 

And why should we borrow from thence. 

If we gather no strength in the strife of mankind ? 

True, the woods must be fell'd, the fields must be 
reapt. 

But leave it to those who are hardened with toil — 
Whose souls in the life of the senses have slept. 

Until they have lapsed into parts of the soil. 

And here every sight, every sound tends to sleep : 

The mind is belittled, though the body may grow ; 
The footsteps of progress but lazily creep, 



CITY AND COUNTRY. 45 

And the seasons, the men and their passions are 
slow. 

The world passes silently by, like a dream, 

And only its lingering echo is here, 
A trance is on forest and meadow and stream, 

An hour is a day, and a day is a year. 

A neighborhood quarrel becomes an event 
As great as an era in triumphs of mind ; 

And the breath of the people in gossip is spent, 

And their heads are as empty of thought as the wind. 

Ah, the Indian has passed like a shadow away, 
But how are his conquerors better than he ? 

We witness a race not so manly to-day. 
And as savage in kin4, if refined in degree. 

Away to the city ! — for that is the heart 

Where the life of the world with a glow and a blow 
Is beating ; but this is the cold distant part 

Where circles the blood with a languishing flow. 

Away to the city ! — the country's the bound 



46 CITY AND COUNTaY. 

Where the surface with scarcely a ripple is curl'd ; 
But the city's the centre where round and still round 
The maelstrom of life is unceasingly whirl'd. 

Oh, better to sink in the ocean's abyss, 

Though monsters of terror inhabit its gloom, 

Than to swim in so shallow a water as this ; 
For action, I cry — give me room ! — give me room ! 

In the din of the mart, in the roar of its wheels, 
A thunder is lent to the current of time ; 

Ah, who in the silence of solitude feels 
That every moment of life is sublime ? 

And there the titanic ideas of the hour 

Drop plump in the billowy ocean of thought, 

While here they but tremble with lessening power, 
Like wavelets from tropical hurricanes caught. 

And there all events are pronounced on at once 
By those who possess the infallible key. 

While here the Sir Oracle, always a dunce. 
Is echoed by dunces of lower degree. 



CITY AND COUNTRY. 47 

And there are collected the spirits of might, 
The gifted and wise, whose opinions are law ; 

And there is refinement of life at the height. 

And like to its like from the crowd may withdraw. 

And there, in an atmosphere glowing with Art, 
Will I feast upon Beauty, and win me a name ; 

The memory of Nature, embalmed in the heart, 
From my pen and my pencil shall spring into fame. 

And life is but short ; let me live while I live 

An age in a day, not a day in an age ; 
Let me quaff to the lees what the earth has to give, 

And in peace I will pass from its shadowy stage. 



PART II. THE WARNING DREAM. 

Farewell, mad city ! — welcome, oh my country home ! 

As crawls the dying lion to his silent cave, 
So with a bleeding heart and wasted strength, I 
come — 

To thee I come to ask for rest, to find a grave. 



48 CITY AND COUNTRY. 

Forgive my heated words, my early friends ard true — 
Ye trees and flowers and blooming women, noble men ! 

With you my youthful roots, of feeling freshly grew, 
And there I long to plant my withered soul again. 

Perhaps beneath your dewy skies it may revive, 

Some autumn buds, some late and pleasant fruit may 
yield ; 

But never can it gladly wave and greenly thrive 
As then before I tore it from its native field. 

Oh mad ambition, ever burning higher and higher ! 

The soul that lusts for fame and earthly excellence, 
Is doomed in restless flame forever to aspire. 

Until itself Qonsumed in quenchless heat intense. 

I had my wish — the smile of all the Arts I wooed ; 

I clomb the dizzy steep of thought, where I could hail 
Still higher peaks that mocked my steps, the while I 
stood 

A better mark for envy's arrows to assail. 

If in the honest rustic's less development 

There is a lack of thought, of ways and speech refined, 



CITY AND COUNTRY. 49 

Ah, what are more developed men, in cities pent, 
But men the more in numbers and the more in kind. 

If wandering, wayside insects sting, how much the lesa 
Shall we be poisoned in a swarm of angry bees ? 

If lowly weeds may wound us in the wilderness, 
How much the better is a park of upas-trees ? 

Away, false city, with thy curses and acclaims ! 

Where men their hearts for gold and power and 
splendor pawn, 
Where all the finer sentiments are empty names. 

Repeated all the more because the soul is gone ; 

Where gilded walls and faces cover sin and guile, 
And grief and joy and love arc made a cunning art, 

And woman's lip is tutored to a winning smile, 
Though sorrow, apathy or hate be in her heart ; 

Where artists make a trick and pander of their skill, 
And starving authors dip their pens in pride and gall, 

Nor have the breadth of soul to stand apart, until 
They see and feel the truth and power in each and all ; 



fet) CITY AND COUNTRY. 

Where walking memories repeat their parrot part, 
And say you thieve from books unread or long forgot, 

And charge each living poet with a want of heart, 
And grudge the world each shilling's worth of music- 
thought ; 

Where social lies are common coin, and men are cast 
In none of Nature's, but convention's narrow moulds, 

And every free and generous impulse dies at last. 
Its life crushed out in shining custom's serpent folds ; 

Where all things, toil and pleasure, seem a tinsel show, 
As fair and false and fleeting as the summer clouds. 

And pallid men like trooping shadows come and go — 
A restless crowd of ghosts that walk in Fashion's 
shrouds. 

Oh give me back my country home ! — no rural town 
With something like the polish of the urban man. 

Without the culture that divides him from the clown — 
A mermaid mixture most adverse to nature's plan ; 

But give me ba k our yeomen souls ! — I choose no more 
The guinea stamp without the golden heart of Toil ; 



CITY AND COUNTRY. 51 

A later ■wisdom is to love our nation's ore — 

Those noblest men — the New World tillers of the soil. 

And give me back the face of Nature, fair and true, 
Its stormy frowns, its raining tears and sunny laugh, 

The world of clouds, the world of trees and waters blue, 
That gave half my being and received a half. 

Oh mother Earth, upon thy bosom let me lean, 

And there rejoice and weep, behold, admire, revere ; 

My words were false, that thou canst grow ' ' familiar — 
mean ;" 
Who sees aright will find thee ever new and dear. 

Thy sun burns heavenlier, thy skies grow high and wide, 
A lovelier lesson is imprinted on the flower, 

A deeper meaning murmurs in the river's tide, 

And grander thoughts awaken in the tempest's hour. 

To thee I come for peace, still peace, and rest, sweet rest ; 

The hills and winds shall give a vigor to my tread, 
The fragrant cedars spread their hands to speak me 
blest. 

The stars distill a healing beauty on my head, — 



62 CITY AND COUNTRY. 

The lake return me thought for thought, and smile for 
smile, 

And, in its nightly dash, repeat " Eternity !" — 
Till Evil to all Beauty I shall reconcile. 

And all that is, to all the better ^vorld to be. 



A STUDY. 



That matcliless brow ! — 
So strangely fair, so wide and lifted, Jane, 
What can its earnest pleading look explain ? 

What seekest thou ? 

That sad sweet brow ! 
Does it thy childhood's early grief retain ? 
Is that bereavement traced forever, Jane, 

Upon its snow ? 

That patient brow ! 
Hast tliou of evil fortune to complain ? 
Thy life has ever been as sunny, Jane, 

As it is now. 



54 A STUDY. 

That prayerful brow ! 
A prayer it alway must express or feign ; 
Therefore in guileless youth, thy Maker, Jane, 

Remember now. 

That saintly brow ! 
Its marble hue and sculptured beaut}^, Jane, 
Should be a shrine where worshipers profane 

May never bow. 



THE SHADOW- 



A moon ascending, full and small, 

A lone and snowy road ; 
And, here and there, a wildwood tall, 

With crinkled antlers broad. 

A lone, dark figure moving by — 

Its shadow goes before ; 
The figure and the shadow fly 

As on a silver floor. 

The sky is blue, the trees are black, 
And white the sheeted ground ; 

And, now and then, the form looks back, 
Or stealthily around. 



56 THE SHADOW. 

But ■whether from suspected harm, 

He hurries on his way, 
Or if to keep his chill blood warm, 

I know not which to say. 

He hastens on his way, and still 
His shadow goes before ; 

And now, to nerve his fickle will, 
His heart he will outpour : 

" Ha ! ha ! I wander all alone, 
In all the wide world drear, 

And nothing can I call my own 
But this my shadow hero. 

The world has said that I am mad. 
Because I love my moods. 

And speak in rhyme when I am sad, 
Or wander in the woods. 

Ha ! Ha ! I thank thee, gentle moon. 
For this my shadow here ; 

It is a friend — a madman's boon, 
And chides my foolish tear. 



TUE SHADOW. 57 

It walks — It runs — it leaps along, 

Yet keeps so kindly near ; 
And, if it had a voice, a song 

'T would carol in my ear. 

It goes before, and, if I turn, 

Will follow me behind — 
A truant hiding from the moon — 

The moon our mother kind. 

Now slow and dark it glides along, 

And loill be moving near, 
As if it were a thought of wrong — 

A thing to hate and fear. 

Oh, leave me, Shadow, grim and black. 

Oh, leave me to myself ! 
And haunt no more my lonely track. 

Thou shapeless demon-elf. 

Away ! away ! blot not the light, 

Thou dark, forerunning Doom ; 
Oh, hide it moon — oh, come thou, night. 

And drown it in thy gloom ! 

. 3* 



58 THE SHADOW. 

But see ! its arms it gaily flings ; 

My merry dwarf it is, 
And I, tlie merriest of kings, 

Will liold my revelries. 

And I will stop and sit me down ; 

This drift shall be my throne ; 
The dazzling frost shall be my crown, 

My realm the wild-wood lone. 

Ho ! ho ! my Shadow, bring me wine, 

For I am weary now. 
And thou shalt be my harlequin. 

And dance upon the snow. 

Set forth the feast ; the minstrels bring ; 

Let clouds of music roll ; 
Let star-eyed Beauty smile and sing. 

Or wreathe the brimming bowl. 

They come ! — fair forms begin to float 

Transparent to the moon ; 
Soft airs swell near — now die remote — 

A glory bursts like noon ! 



THE SHADOW. SSt 

Come near, more near, ye loving eyes ; 

Gaze on me ere we part ; 
I cannot clasp you — cannot rise — 

The ice is on my heart. 

Oh stars, no more the eyes ye seemed ; 

Oh harps — the wind's shrill cry ; 
Oh forms — the clouds ; I have but dreamed, 

And, dreaming, waked to die !" 

He said, and clouds began to loom 

Above tbe darkened wood ; 
The Shadow melted in the gloom — 

A drop within the flood. 

All night there raged a wintry storm, 

And sonny morning-tide 
Revealed a shadow and a form, • 

Close sleeping side by side. 

And soon a passing traveler found 

The fair-haired, youthful one, 
Stretched pulseless on the snowy ground — 

His face against the sun. 



60 THE SHADOW. 

The form was wrapt in winter's pall ; 

In death the lips were clasped ; 
And in the hand, an icicle^ 

Was, like a sceptre, grasped. 



A HAPPY DAY. 



A dearer day may sometime come to me, 
But none is garnered in my memory, 
So sweet as that I lately spent with thee. 

The sun that shone upon us seemed the same 
That often lights the evening clouds with flame, 
And all the leafless scene was cold and tame. 

And thus each sound and form and color died ; 
Bat in my soul they found a place to hide 
Until, as now, they rise up glorified ; 

For, all the scenes that are entombed in sense. 



62 A HAPPY DAY. 

Have each a living essence that from thence 
Awakes in Fancy's world to life intense. 

Those leafless trees, tome, are every one 
With blooming recollections clothed upon, 
And with a purer glory shines the sun. 

The chill November wind that shook the trees, 
Comes back to me like airs from summer seas, 
As soft and fragrant as the hum of bees. 

No more the faded fields are dry and sere ; 
They freshly wave as in the virgin year. 
Or as an Eden in a sinless sphere. 

The road, the house, the mimic lake, 

Such color from imagination take — 

Are so transfigured for your own sweet sake, 

That all the vale a perfect picture seems, 
Enriched with shade and lit with golden gleams, 
Like those that bless our lightest morning dreams. 

And then the long and quiet walks we took 



A HAPPY DAY. 63 

Around the hills, along the roaring brook — 
How changed, yet real, all the objects look ! 

The dizzy rocks in recollection rise 
Sublime as were the walls of Paradise 
That once in vision met the prophet's eyes ; 

And we — ah, we were more than mortal there, 
For you were as the angels wise, and fair, 
And I, like them, was free from earthly care. 

We said not much, but only seemed to stroll 

As spirits that on heavenly hilis patrol, 

And, silent, hold communion soul with soul — 

Like seraphs who, upon some crystal height, 

See far below them, in this mortal night. 

The stream of Life flash onward wild and bright. 

That foaming torrent ! — 'tis a symbol true 

Of my own being flowing on to you. 

Since first your loveliness and worth I knew. 

My childhood was the wandering of the rill, 



64 A HAPPY DAY. 

My youth the toilsome turning of a mill, 
"With dreamy windings thro' the world, until 

Like yonder stream, when first you chanced to pass, 
My soul reflected back your spirit-face, 
And saw itself reflected there as in a glass. 

A pilgrim stream — a wayward anchoret, 
In none of those I looked upon, as yet 
Had I such likeness in unlikeness met. 

But you, enchanted with your image caught 
Within the clearest mirror of my thought, 
I held my purposed course of life for naught. 

By some sweet influence of your eyelids led, 
I left the vales where I had slumbered, 
And down an untried steep I wildly sped. 

And you — a spirit flitting on the rocks — 
I followed, where a gulf of wonder locks 
Me in, and where I fall in blissful shocks 

From love to love, in such a sudden way 



A n.VPPY DAY. 65 

That all my life is clianged to bappy spray, 
Nor, if I would, can I tlie current stay. 

And still I follow, still I seem to hear 
The cataract's deep music sounding near, 
In tones prophetic, clearer and more clear ; 

And still I seem to list your spirit-call, 
And see you leaning o'er the fearful Fall 
Where I must dare the last descent of all. 

And will you, aerial spirit as you are, 

With me, the plunge, the shock, the whirlpool dare, 

And all my chanceful lot enjoy or bear ? 

And will you from your prouder height descend. 
Your life with mine in lowly union blend, 
Until the mingled river reach its end — 

Until our stream-like flow, thro' gloom and glee, 
Shall pay its tribute to that boundless sea 
Where love is lost in Love's infinity. 

Bly thoughts, that golden day, were something such ; 



66 A HAPPY DAY. 

But glances, smiles and kindlings of the touch, 
Were better than to utter overmuch. 

Nor did I know my heart ; for, to be seen. 
There must be space our joys and us between, 
And quiet reveries must intervene — 

Those solitary hours that o'er us steal 

In silence, when the floating thoughts we feel, 

To Fancy's airy frost-work may congeal. 



THE DEAD-WATOH. 



Each saddened face is gone, and tearful eye 
Of mother, brother, and of sisters fair ; 

With ghostly sound their distant footfalls die 
Thro' whispering hall, and up the rustling stair. 

In yonder room the newly dead doth sleep ; 

Begin, we thus, my friend, our watch to keep. 

And now both feed the fire and trim the lamp ; 

Pass cheerly, if we can, the slow-paced hours ; 
For, all without is cold, and drear, and damp, 

And the wide air with storm and darkness lowers ; 
Pass cheerly, if we may, the live-long night. 
And chase pale phantoms, paler fear, to flight. 



68 TUE DEAD-WATCn. 

We will not talk of death, of pall and knell — 
Leave that, the mirth of brighter hours to check ; 

But tales of life, love, beauty, let us tell. 
Or of stern battle, sea and stormy wreck ; 

Call up the visions gay of other days— 

Our boyhood sports and merry youthful ways. 

Hark to the distant bell ! — an hour is gone ! 

Enter yon silent room with footsteps light ; 
Our brief, appointed duty must be done — 

To bathe the face, and stay death's rapid blight — 
To bare the rigid face, and dip the cloth 
That hides a mortal, ' crushed before the moth.' 

The bathing liquid scents the chilly room ; 

How spectral white are shroud and veiling lace 
On yonder side-board , in the fearful gloom I 

Take off the muffler from the sleeper's fiice — 
You spoke, my friend, of sunken cheek and eye — 
Ah, what a form of beauty here doth lie ! 

Never hath Art, from purest wax or stone, 

So fair an image, and so lustrous, wrought ; 
It is as if a beam from Heaven had shown 



TUE DKAD-WATCU. 69 

A weary angel in sweet slumber caught ! — 
The smiling lip — the warmly tinted cheek, 
And all so calm, so saint-like, and so meek ! 

She softly sleeps, and yet how unlike sleep ; 

No fairy dreams flit o'er that marble face. 
As ripples play along the breezy deep, 

As shadows o'er the field each other chase ; 
The spirit dreams no more, but wakes in light, 
And freely wings its flashing seraph flight. 

She sweetly sleeps, her lips and eyelids sealed ; 

No ruby jewel heaves upon her breast. 
With her quick breath now hidden, now revealed, 

As setting stars long tremble in the west ; 
But white and still as drifts of moonlit snow, 
Her folded cerements and her flushless brow 

Oh there is beauty in the winter moon. 
And beauty in the brilliant summer flower, 

And in the liquid eye and luring tone 

Of radiant Love's and rosy Laughter's hour; 

But where is beauty, in this blooming world. 

Like Death upon a maiden's lip impearled ! 



70 THE DEAD-WATCH. 

Veil we the dead, and close the open door ; 

Perhaps the spirit, ere it soar above, 
Would watch its clay alone, and hover o'er 

The face it once had kindled into love ; 
Commune we hence, friend, this wakeful night, 
Of Death made lovely by so blest a sight. 



MORE LIGHT." 



I had a vision, yesternight, 

Of one who elomb a mountain's side, 
And loudly cried for " Light — more light ! " 

And loudlier called at every stride. 

His words so silver-voiced — so broad 
And fair his marble throne of mind, 

Ho walked the mountain like a god, 
And upward gazed, but — ^he was blind. 

And thro' his filmy eyes there came 
The glimmer of a distant glare, 

For, all the summit burned with flame. 
And shot its cinders high in air. 



72 " MOKE LIGUT." 

Still up and on he urged his way, 
With form erect and footsteps bold, 

Till he was lost, beyond the day. 

Within the smoke that downward rolled. 

"More light — more light ! " he proudly said, 
" Too long has truth in darkness lain, 

Too long have men for falsehood bled — 
The world shall welcome Reason's reign. 

I gasp for breath in bigot clouds, 
But keep my upward, onward way. 

And brighter, brighter stream the floods 
Of freer thought and coming day !" 

His voice was lost to listening ears. 
His form grew dim to sight of men. 

And, in the happy after years. 
His name was never heard again. 



SONNETS. 



CALIFOKNIA. 



High towering o'er our broad and fruitful land, 

His head above the topmost twinkling star, 
I saw, in dream, a shining Figure stand, 
And hold a world-long balance in his hand. 

To that, dim forms were winging from afar ; 
And, casting what they brought, in either scale. 

They watched the trembling pointer's faintest jar. 
In vain round one scale gathered angels pale, 
And in it wept their tears, with prayerful wail, 

To add a weight to all their diadems ; 
For, in the other, iron crowns were thrown. 

Then came a bright young Form, in flashing gems. 

And with the angels cast her golden crown — 

The other scale flew up, and this went down I 

4 



74 SONNETS. 



A REPLY. 



I KNOW, I sometimes only jingle rhymes 

Together, by the force of love or will y 
But there are rarer, purer, calmer times. 

When all the soul, in light serene and still. 
Is lifted up, and thought -with feeling chimes. 

And strange new energies my spirit thrill. 
At first, I seem with toil to recollect 

A song I framed in antenatal states ; 
But soon I read it in my mind correct, 

And each predestined word impatient waits 
For ink ; or, rather, all my soul can hold 
Runs, pure and glowing, into proper mould ; 

And if there be a line or accent lame. 

My transmigrated memory is in blame. 



SONNETS. 75 



TO A BLONDE. 



I EVER loved a dark and doting eye, 
And heavy curls of glossy raven bair ; 

But now, oh Lilie, never more I sigh 

For eyes and ringlets steeped in Passion's dye, 
Since loveliness like thine is passing fair, 
Whatever be the color it may wear. 

The hair is hut a turban for the head, 
The eyelash but a little fairy veil — 

Each lovely, if to Beauty they are wed. 
I love thy liair, so golden-brown and pale, 
That o'er thy tenyiles thou dost smoothly trail ; 

I love thy drooping eyelid's silver thread ; 
But, more than braided locks of sunny gold. 
Thee — thee I love, thou ever sunny-souled ! 



76 SONNETS. 



A PICTJJRE. 

A Cross is set in verdure bright and deep, 
Where he who painted last the " Cross and World/' 

Amid his mountain solitudes should sleep, 
While evermore the sunset clouds, unfurled. 

In crimson smile — in gloomy showers weep. 

And, low beneath, their watch the Catskills keep ; 
Above, the lofty piles of cloud upwhirled, 

Like Alps of efflorescent silver, stand. 
Ay, such should be his monument sublime. 

And wrapt in mournful gloom should be the land 

That felt the waving of his magic wand — 
That with his name is linked in after Time. 
Nor is thy dream to Cole's renown alone : 
It prophesies, gifted Church, thine own. 
May, 1848. 



SONNETS. T7 



TWO P1CTUKE3. 

Two pictures paint for me — the first, a Cross 
In foreground light against a distant shroud 

Of gloom, which scattered altar-fires emboss, 
And thro' which loom in shade the cities proud 
Of Athens, Ninevah, and Babel's crowd, 

While, far beyond, the Deluge billows toss. 
And gleams of Eden pierce its midnight cloud. 

The other picture — let it be the same 

Bright Cross reversed from light, in foreground black, 

The Victim half-seen now behind its frame. 

And, just beyond, Jerusalem in flame. 
And then still later history, in a track 

Of light that reaches from the Cross to where 

The grand Apocalypse fills all the air. 



78 SONNETS. 



AUTUMN SNOW. 

All day tlie streaming roofs and swimming ground 

Have slied, or drank the plenteous autumn rains ; 
All day tbe heavy-laden skies have frowned, 
And dozing eyes have felt the slumberous sound, 
While gazing idly at the sullen plains — 
Or, waked to watch the thousand vivid stains 
That dye the far off frost-enkindled woods, 

And fire the way-side trees, whose foliage drips, 
Like bathing-birds with crimson feather-tips. 
Lo ! suddenly a whiter darkness broods, 
And floating snow succeeds the plashing floods : 

The monstrous flakes seem large as wafted ships — 
Or, like a white-winged angel throng they fall ; — 
Alas ! how can we mortals entertain ye all ! 



SONNETS. 79 



THREE SPIRITS. 



The Summer came, and witli it came a dream j 

I saw a galley all of goldea sheen, 
And sails of silk, float down a crystal stream, 
And in it sat, with eyes of burning beam, 

The spirit of the fair Egyptian queen. 
The Autumn came ; I saw an Indian maid 

Who glided thro' the faded windy woods. 
With scarlet berries in the glossy braid 
That veiled her olive face in dusky shade. 

The Spring returned ; I lay beside its floods. 
And there in dreams thy form around me played 

With dewy blooms. I see, in vernal moods. 
No dream of eld, but freshest hopes awake 
To crowQ the Future for thy own dear sake. 



80 SONNETS. 



TO NO ONE. 



" KoLL on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean — roll !" 
But I forget myself — 'tis not the sea 
I would address in bold apostrophy ; 
'Tis one, of thought profound and virgin soul, 
Whose single blessedness I would condole. 

" Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow," 
For, in the eldest gossip's memory. 

Thou wert as old and blue as thou art now ; 
And many broken hearts, 'tis said, didst thou 
Let die " uaknelled, uncoffinsd, and unknown," 
Or drive distracted with thy lcarn(^ tone. 

Oh thou so stern^ declare by what chaste vow, 
Thou art most deep and transcendental grown, 
And livest on — " dread, fathomless, alone !" 



SONNETS. 81 



MT. HOLYOKE. 



The upward, winding road and rocky stair, 
Our weary feet have slowly trod, and now 
We stand at last upon the mountain's brow. 

So close below it sleep the vallies fair, 

It seems an island floating in the air ; — 

So near beneath this giddy brink, 'twould seem 

That one might overleap the mountain's base, 
And plunge far down within yon coiling stream 

That now reflects, in its unruffled face, 

The spanning bridge and elm-tree's weeping grace. 
The soul recoils at such a thought ; the eye 

Loves more to rove around the circling space 

Where purple hills^ against the summer sky, 

Seem all there is of Earth's immensity ! 

4* 



SONNETS. 




A SUNBEAM. 



An angel-sunbeam started from the sun, 

Nor stopped to toy with Mercury in his orbit, 

So swiftly on its errand it must run ; 

The warmth of Venus, next, did not absorb it, 
Nor clouds and vapors in its speed could curb it. 

On — on it flew, until its goal was won. 
And there it shone in glory on my wall. 

Thank God, who sent it thus to chase my gloom,— 
A hundred million miles, on me to fall, 

And fill with happy thoughts my soul — my room ! 
Thank God, that I can send a prayer to all, 

As far, as warm, to cheer a hapless doom ! 

Thank God, our kindness need not shine so far, 

But it may greet some nearer human star ! 



LOVE'S SUNSET. 



Oh there are other "burning days 

Than those that light the common world ; 
And there are other dazzling rays 

Than those in summer clouds impearled ; 
There is a day within the soul — 

A long sweet day that dawns not twice, 
And when its sun hath reached the goal, 

The heart is left to freeze in ice. 

We love in boyhood's dreamy hour, 
And never love in truth again ; 

Beauty hath then a noonday power, 
And maddens with delicious pain ; 

A look is like a mirrored ray — 

A glance like sudden flashing light. 



84 love's sunset. 

That makes the pulses wildly play, 
And lures and blinds the dizzy sight. 

Slow dawns that love upon the heart, 

When, wakened from our childhood's sleep, 
We gaze around, and, wondering, start 

From heavy slumber, long and deep ; 
And all about are dewy glades. 

And bird-like hovering songs above, 
And misty, changing lights and shades 

That shadow out the Land of Love, 

Up rises then a full-orbed sun — 

The silent sun of speechless love ; 
We drink a glowing life from one 

Who ever walks in light above, 
And flings such splendor on our way, 

That golden languor o'er us rolls. 
And we would bid the sun to stay 

In the midway heaven of our souls. 

But time speeds on with all its change. 

And Love's long day wears slow away, 
And sets beyond some mountain range ; 



love's sunset. 85 

Yet will its dying colors play 
For months aud years within the heart, 

As if the purple and the gold 
Of youth's romance would ne'er depart 

And leave us lost in twilight cold. • 



LOVE'S ALCHEMY. 



" So, if I waste words now, in truth 

You must blame Love. His early rage 
Had force to make me rixymein youth, 

And makes me talk too much in age." 

" The Miliars Daughter." 



" Of progresssiye souls, all lores and friendships are momentary." 

Emersox. 



In boyhood dreams my Fancy loved to look 

Within the spirit-haunted cells of old, 

Where great magicians dealt with things unknown ; 

Where crucibles and deadly alkalies, 

Black liquors, crooked flasks, and frightful skulls, 

Of Wisdom spake, that dared the realms of Fear ;— 

Or, in the laboratories richly built, 

Where princes vied with plodding penury, 



I 



love's alchemy. ^7 

To tear the secret heart of nature out. 

But never had I dreamed" that I should see 

A living alchemist, until, one day, 

The aged stranger took me by the hand, 

And led me to his den. He was a man 

"Whom all had shunned as mad ; but I, in lovo 

Of one so sad and mild, had won his heart. 

He led me to his lonely room, and there 

My wildest visions all were realized. 

Around, were all the wonders of his art ; 
And louo; we sat discoursina; of the stone 
That changed all substance into ruddy gold. 
" Already have I found some hidden powers," 
He said, " and hope to find the master-charm." 
But I rejoined, •' To. day, I read that those 
Who spent their life in such a fruitless search, 
"Were little mindful of their busy times, 
And lost the warm humanities of life, 
And ceased to love" — and here I faintly blushed. 
But he with heightened color spoke : " My art 
Will yet outrival all the arts that late 
Have flattered men to sudden pride, and yet 
I shall have given a treasure to the world. 
Nor am dead to life and gentle love. 



8 LOVE S ALCHEMr. 

For, by my skill, I summon back to me 

The spirit-forms of those 1 loved in youth. 

There are who curl their manhood's bearded lip 

At Love, and lightly speak of childish whims, 

As they had all outlived the fire of youth, 

Aud cooled its liquid gold to iron strength. 

Strange alchemy ! — and stranger end of life— 

To toil and glow before the world's great forge, 

To blow its smouldering coals with urgent breath, 

To force the vital dew from foreheads, grimed 

With dust and smoke, and slowly thus to steal 

The blood from muscles full and rounded cheeks; - 

Until the fibres of the shrunken face 

Stand net-like out like faded, eaten loaves ; — 

All — all to wring the baser from the precious,— 

Black coals from music -flashing diamonds. 

There is a higher chemistry — to hold 

The loves and sighs of youth of wondrous price, 

To fuse them in the pointed, solving flame 

Of after wisdom, — each component part 

To separate by nice analysis, 

And thus to find the elemental truths 

That make life's combinations beautiful ; — 

To melt, aud then to cool them all again 



I 



LOVE S ALCHEMY. 

la other crystal harmonies of thought. 

But sit you down, and look with reverent eye. 
And you shall see the glowing forms of all 
The queenly line that reigned within my heart. 
I sing a potent spell to call them forth ; 
Then, at a touch, the shapely mists shall fall, 
And, one by one, shall leave the polished drop 
Of magic metal pure, from which they sprang. 

Spirits of Earth, and Air, and Fire, 
Skim the dross and fan the flame ! 

Behold the might of young desire. 
Rise, sweet spirit, at thy name ! 

A little child with soft blue eyes, 
That speak of joy and half surprise ; 
And she is fair, as children are, 
And more than this we cannot say. 
How stole she then my heart away ? 
We rambled all the sunny hours 
By spangled banks of yellow flowers, 
And 'neath the ancient orchard trees, 
As we had been two wedded bees ; 



90 love's alchemt. 

And thus we lisped our little vows, 
And said that we would each espouse 
The other, at a distant day. 
How won this child my heart away ? 
Now, magic wand, dissolve the shape, 
And you shall see the mist escape. 
And know the charm, whate'er it be ;- 
The silver drop is Infancy ! 

Spirits of Earth, and Fire, and Air, 
Scatter the ashes — stir the flame I 

Behold another, young and fair, — 
Rise, fair spirit, at thy name I 

A graceful girl of two and ten, 
Just at the budding moment, when 
The child begins to watch and wear 
A woman's look and matron air. 
And, with a winsome mimicry. 
Affects a thousand things to be. 
Her silver laugh is never mute ; 
She has a fairy hand and foot, 
A red-ripe lip, and witching glance 
That never stays in wanton dance ; 



love's alchemy. 91 

With wliirl and twirl and airy spring, 
Smiling ever — ever on the wing, 
She doats, and floats, and lends a kisa 
That fires a doubting boy with bliss. 
A child would chase right up the sky 
A silver-sprinkled butterfly ; 
And so I loved her thoughtlessly, 
Believing, with the heart of youth, 
When all is fair, then all is truth, 
And all is good where all is gay. 
How could she take my heart away ? 
A dart of flame — she disappears, 
And as the curling vapors die, 
Within the crucible adheres 
The glistening dross of Coqdetry ! 

Spirits of Air, and Fire, and Earth, 

Stir the coals, and wake the flame ! 
Let shadows brood another birth ; 

Rise, pure spirit, at thy name ! 

A slender form of gentleness, 
With golden chain aud simple dress ; 
Not beautiful, but young and pure, 



92 love's alchemy. 

She has a look and voice demure ; 
Yet, in that soul of earnest truth, 
There is a merry gush of youth ; 
The limpid stream of quietude, 
Translucent with simplicity, 
Will often break from plenitude, 
In sparkles of unconscious glee. 
Her bubbling words for ever start 
From out the fountain of her heart ; 
And she knows not if she be fair. 
Nor if she be the heir of wealth ; 
Nor hides a glance of honest stealth 
From one too young to think or care 
But how his love he best may say. 
How stole this saint my heart away ? 
A touch dissolves the gentle form, 
And from her breast a jewel warm 
Among the ashes you may see : — 
The crystal is Sincerity ! 

Spirits of Air, and Fire, and Sea, 
Sweep the sky — its flashes tame 
To light the blaze of memory ! 



LOVE S ALCHEMY. 

Kise, bright spirit, at tliy name ! 

In glowing loveliness appears 

The goddess of the student's years ; 

She seems to move diviner than 

The olden forms Olympian, 

And all around, with twinkling faces, 

Forever dance agroup^of Graces. 

She has a beauty, sweet and strange, 

That to a thousand shapes will change ; 

Yet not her outward loveliness 

The dazzled soul can so possess, 

As the ever winning eloquence 

That flows from purest love intense 

Of every breathing, burning thought 

That Genius from its depths has brought. 

I dreamed me o'er the Poet's page, 

And strove to grasp the thoughtful Sage ; 

Yet, both, a new significance 

Transfused thro' her sweet lip and glance, 

And all great spirits seemed to find 

In her a genial heart and mind, 

And kindled there the truest ray. 

How stole this star my heart away ? 



DS 



94 love's alchemy. 

A flash electric solves the spell ; 
The gold withia the crucible 
('Tis hard between the two to guess) 
Is Intellect, or is Loveliness ! 

Spirits of Frost, and Ice and Cold, 
Chill the coals and kill the flame ! 

And from the air a statue mould ; 
Rise, pale spirit, at thy name ! 

Like Yenus rising from the sea, 

A snow-white face of faultless lines, 

A form of perfect symmetry ; 

Her penciled brow enshrines 

An icy brilliant eye ; her lip 

But speaks of nicest workmanship ; 

Its bloom is not the bloom of life. 

But rather like the crimson stain 

That may from year to year remain 

Upon a coldly glittering knife. 

No shade of feeling ever crossed 

That face of ajj'e unmelted frost ; 

No languor in her attitude 

For once unstrings the saintly prude ; 



love's alcuemy. 95 

No swimming motion in her gait, 
But all the march of queenly state 
Upon a coronation day. 
How warmed she then my heart away ? 
I just had seized the magic brush^ 
Had knelt before the shrine of Art, 
And bathed within the glorious flush 
Of visioned Beauty, — thus my heart 
Leapt at the sight of her, but shrank 
To find no soul, and all a blank. 
Now let the statue crumble down, 
And, like the fragment of a crown. 
Upon the dusty hearth and sooty, 
Behold the frozen pearl of Beauty ! 

Spirits of Stars, and Streams, and Flowers, 
Strew your fragrance and your bloom ! 

Give back the last beloved, ye Hours, — 
At her name, oh give her room ! 

A little, gentle, loving maid. 

In simple mourning weeds arrayed — 

A lily in an ebon vase. 

Her ripe, yet pure, transparent face 



96 



LOVE S ALCHEMY. 



Shows quick the passing rosy rush 
Of soft emotion's faintest flush, — 
As if a bridal rose should change, 
By some indwelling magic strange, 
From white to red and red to white. 
Her drooping eyelids shade the light 
Of eyes that else had shot too bright ; 
And on her lip a fairy smile 
Lies sweetly sleeping all the while, — 
Save when, awakened but in half, 
It starts bewildered to a laugh ! 
Her many sorrows leave no shade. 
Nor any brooding glooms impart ; 
But, sunshine lies upon the braid 
Of golden glory round her head, 
And sunshine lies within her heart. 
Her lips and looks are love distilled. 
With brimming love her soul is filled, 
And love flows in her motions all. 
And makes her voice most musical. 
If more than this I cannot say. 
Why drew she then my heart away ? 
Again, oh wand, dissolve the shape, 
And let the magic mist escape ; 



love's alchemy. 97 

Behold a charm all charma above — 
- Here glows the diamond of Love ! 

The incantation's done. The last sweet lesson, 

Unwitting given, hath taught me this, at last — 

To love for Love's, and not the loved one's sake ; 

In loving her, I loved but Love, and now 

All shapes and persons matter not to me, — 

For, at the best, they fade and pass away. 

To love is its own end ; to love some one 

Degrades an end unto a means, and makes 

The soul dependent on mere outward forms 

That come and go, and bring us pain and tears. 

Call this the cold philosophy of Self? — 

But this is aye a world of cruel change, 

And sweet refined pain must conquer pain ; 

And, loving thus, the essence all remains, 

And absence, change, and death, may do their work ; 

The Love itself survives. Nor do me wrong 

To think me faithless ; the lesson also warns 

To keep the heart shut up to its own joy. 

Nor think me fickle that I changed so oft, — 

More oft, in truth, than I have told. For I 

Did but obey a self-transforming instinct, 



8 LOVE S ALCHEMY. 

Like as the seasons change, the trees enlarge, 
The shells renew their pearly homes, the birds , 
Assume new hues, and serpents cast their slough, — 
Or, as Humanity doth ever change 
Its ends — first loving savage Strength, then Wealth, 
Wisdom next, and last of all, the might of Love." 

And more the old man said, while I sat by, 
And saw in wordless wonder all the shapes 
Appear and fade ; and oft I started up, 
As if to clasp the visions in my arms, 
And then in awe fell back ; and when the last 
Had melted into air, I heard no more 
Than I have written. But the alchemist 
Still talked of mind progressive, forms of love. 
And evil being but good in dark disguise, 
And fiends but creatures of the coward brain. 
And more of which I recollect few words ; 
But now it seems an echo of the cheap 
And sounding speech of our philosophers. 
His looks and words grew wild, and suddenly 
A shadow seemed to fall upon my heart — 
A voiceless woe to fill my startled soul. 
I felt some evil prescuce near, and soon 



love's alchemy. 99 

I saw the aged man spring up, and clench 
His hand, and gaze aghast at empty air. 
" I will not yield my soul, hated fiend !" 
He said, and then exhausted, speechless, pale, 
He sank upon the ground, and moved no more. 
How long I sat I know not, but at length 
I stirred, and rose, and ran in fright away. 



TO A FLOWER, 

FOUND IN A CHEST OF TEA. 

A FADED blue-bell ia a chest of tea ! 

A messenger from distant regions sent— 
A voyager across the mighty sea — 

A link 'twixt continent and continent ! 
Though but a waif — a trifle — thou to me 

Of many scenes and thoughts art eloquent — 
Of scenes fantastic, beautiful and strange, 
As lie within the world's unbounded range. 

The Central Tlowery Kingdom was thy home, 
And thou, a witness of its light and bloom, 

Art sent of Heaven, if not of men, to roam. 
Imprisoned darkly in a fragrant tomb, 



TO A FLOWER. 101 

And tossed upon the surging ocean's foam, 

Until, enshrined within a student's room, 

Tby crushed and brittle leaflets are unfurled 

To greet the sunshine of a Western World. 

Oh, that thy quickened life could flow again, 
And that we knew the silent thoughts of flowers ! 

Thy deep-blue eyes and leafy lips would then 
Declare if other skies are sweet as ours — 

Would speak of wondrous climes beyond our ken. 
And wile away the silver-sandaled hours 

With many tales of that mysterious land. 

Around whose breadth the walls of ages stand. 

And yet 'tis not because an unknown soil 
Bore thee, that thou to me a treasure art ; 

For there man's lot is no less one of toil ; 
He bears about the self-same human heart ; 

He knows the same sweet peace or wild turmoil, 
And frets out life in camp, and court, and mart ; 

The same winds blow, no other sunlight warms, 

And all is Nature's self in other forms. 

This simple flower has deeper thoughts for me. 



102 TO A FLOWER. 

For that, like mine and every living soul, 
It has its own unraveled history 

Recorded on no earthly page or scroll ; 
For that it is a thread of sympathy 

With lands beyond where oceans roll ; 
* Within the infant rind of this small flower,' 
Memory ' hath residence, and ' Fancy ' power.' 



THE NEW PLANET, 



A SONG OF THE SOLAR FAMILY. 



THE EARTH. 

Hail ! — thou distant starry stranger ! 

Thou art a planet newly born, 
As once a star above the manger. 

Unnumbered in creation's morn, 
The Eastern wise-men saw at night, 

O'erhanging bright the Holy Child, 
And fading when the dawning light 
Outshone the day-star's glory mild. 

So welcome to our shining number. 
All hymning as we dance along ; 
We watch and fan thy infant slumber, 
And lull thee with our aery song. 



104 THE NBW PLANET. 



MAKS. 

Hail!— hail thou twinkling fearful'stranger ! 

Fear not my fierce and ruddy eye. 
And I will ward off every danger, 

When bearded comets, rushing by, 
Trouble thy young and tender heart. 

A warrior I, with spear and shield. 
Will teach thy hand to hurl the dart. 

The bow to spring, the sword to wield. 
Then welcome, etc. 



THE ASTEROIDS. 

Lo ! Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta, 

Thy maids of honor stars ordain ; 
And we will guard thy noon's siesta, 

And wrap thee in thy swathing train. 
The first bold rang-er that appears, 

We'll clip its rays and weave thy robe. 
For, like the Fates, the thread and shears 

We hold, and clothe each new-born globe. 
Then welcome, etc, 



THE NEW PLANET. 105 



JUPITER, SATURN AND HERSCUEL. 

Hail ! — liail, our fair-haired cherub-brother ! 

Three giant brethi'en grey are we, 
Who think no ill if still another 

Has joiited our starry company ; 
And if thy tender cheek and eye 

Have found too bright the fiery sun, 
Give us thy little hand and fly 

Where our wide wintry circles run. 
Then welcome, etc. 



VENUS. 

Come ! — I will be thy loving mother, 

Thou wild and rosy infant-sphere ! 
Ah, once I had just such another — 

Nay, blush not, Mars, my cavalier ! 
They called him Love, while on the Earth ; 

He winged thro' all the worlds eleven, 
But when they ill repaid his mirth. 

He fled, affrighted child, to Heaven. 

Then welcome, etc. 

5* 



106 THE NEW PLANET. 



MERCURY. 

Again — again, sweet planet, hail ! 

Come, warm thee in the sun's great eye, 
And I will hush thy infant wail ; 

For, thou wilt chill and fade and die, 
If thou art cradled in a clime 

So far from light and heat and life; 
Then heed no more their idle rhyme, 

And I will end the gentle sti'ife. 
Then welcome, etc. 



ALL IN CONCERT. 

Then hail ye all the now-born planet ! 

Hail ye its fresh and laughing gleam ! 
Oh, chase it — toss it — kiss it — fan it, 

Until it glows with full-orbed beam ! 
Another prince of royal line — 

A new apostle with us eleven, 
Among our ranks will henceforth shine, 

And teach to man the ways of heaven ! 

So welcome, to our shining number, etc. 



THE EE^AIOVAL. 



The fiend had goue, and all was still 
In each affrighted hall and room ; 

And moonlight lay on roof and hill — 
A deathly smile across the gloom. 

A grandame old liad fled — a wound 

Her steps had tracked with dotting blood ; 

Within the hall a man had swooned, 
And there a trembling maiden stood. 

She had escaped the vengeful arm 
That smote a father, mother, child ; 

And there she leaned in fixed alarm, 
And gazed around in horror wild. 



108 THE REMOVAL. 

A half-husbed cry was heard alone — 
The wailing of a dying girl 

Who lay where firelight-flashes shone 
On lily cheek and flossy curl. 

And were these all that filled the scene— 
The living twain, the dying three ? 

Ah, had we spirit-eyes, I ween 
There had been other sight to see. 

The gloomy shadows of the night, 

The moonlight cold and pale and thin, 

The stars above, the fading light 
Of feeble fire and lamp within — 

Had all been lost in light and song — 
The glory of a hidden world, 

And we had seen a gathering throng 
That stood with angel-pinions furled. 

They stooped above the child — that host, 
And with them gazed two others there, 

Not pale £^nd misty like a ghost. 
But as the angels bright and fair. 



THE REMOVAL. 109 

They were the spirits of the dead, 
In flowing robes of glistening white, 

With circling haloes round each head, 
And glancing wings of silver light. 

They watched until the wailings ceased, 
And, flame-like from the lifeless clay, 

The infant-spirit was released. 
Awakened to immortal day. 

As birds shake off the spangled dew, 
And greet the dawn and cheerly sing, 

The infant to its parents flew 
With joyful flutter of the wing. 

Then, hand in hand, they trod the air, 

And touched no more the sanguined floor ; 

Nor is their presence heeded there. 
Nor needs their passage open door, 

A parting glance at hallowed home 
They cast — their journey then begun, 

They mounted thro' the starry dome. 
And passed the last resplendent sun. 



110 THE REMOVAL. 

Still up they floated, band iii hand — 

It was a glorious sight to see ! 
Around them still the flaming band, 

With song and heavenly pageantry. 

At length, a glory met their sight, 
That mortal eye may not behold — 

Broad gates of pearl, and spires of light, 
And long-drawn streets of lucid gold. 

They reached at last the inmost space 
Where, on a lofty jasper throne, 

Sat One from whose unveiled face 

The earth and heavens may well have flown. 

They stood amid the sun-like glow — 
The child and parents in a band. 

And looked not up and bowed them low, 
With covered face and clasping hand. 

They took no harp — no anthem sang, 
But knelt in humble silence there, 

And, (while the heavens with welcome rang,) 
For him who slew them, breathed a prayer. 



THE ELM-SYLPH. 



A BEAUTIFUL elm, with a maidenly form, 
That smiles ia the sunlight and swings in the storm, 
Has shaded my window for many a year. 
And grown, like a sister, more lovely and dear. 
It whispers me dreams in the faint summer days, 
And sprinkles my table with gold-floating rays ; 
It sings me its music thro' all the hush'd night. 
And shows me a glimpse of the stars' stealthy light ; 
It curtains the glare of the awakening dawn. 
And wooes back the dusk on the shadowy lawn. 
Oh, long have I loved thee, my Elm — gentle Elm ! 
Thou standest as proud as the queen of a realm. 
And winningly wavest thy soft leafy arms. 
Like a beautiful maid who is conscious of charms. 
Oh, oft have I leaned on thy rough-rinded breast, 
And thought of it oft as an iron-like vest — 



112 THE ELM-SYLPH. 

No breastplate of steel, but a corslet of bark 

That hid the white limbs of my Joan of Arc ! 

Shout — shout to thy brothers, the forests, I said, 

And lead out the trees with a soldierly tread ; 

Thou art armed to the head , and hast many a plume — 

So marshal the trees, and avert their sad doom ; 

Enroll all their sc[uadrons and lead out the van, 

And turn the swift axe on your murderer — man ! 

But ah, — thus I said evermore, — ah, the trees. 

Though they wail in the tempest and sing in the breeze, 

Have never a soul and are rooted in earth ! 

They live and they die where they spring into birth ; 

The stories of Dryads are only a dream. 

And trees are no more than they outwardly seem. 

One evening I heard the low voice of the tree 
That told all its griefs and its joyings to me ; 
The moon, overspread with a white misty veil, 
Seemed quitting its grave, like a spectre-face pale ; 
I looked at the elm, and I gazed at the moon — 
How long I know not — but I started, as soon 
A smooth little hand, with a velvet embrace^ 
Took mine in its clasp — but I saw not a face ; 
I saw but a hand stealing out from a branch, 



THE EiM-SYLPH. 113 

Whose leaves 'gan to wither, the rough rind to blanch, 

And soon all the trunk and the off-shoots to strain — 

To writhe and to swell like a serpent in pain — 

Or like the nymph, Daphne, when she was pursued 

And, changed to a laurel tree, pantingly stood. 

An arm — lily arm ! — and a neck — snowy neck ! 

And, lo, all the elm tree is falling a wreck ; 

Like a butterfly's chrysalis, bursts all the bark, 

And forth as a sylph springs my Joan of Arc ! 

My heart ! how she struggled and swayed, when the wind 

Blew hither and thither, aad shrieked like a fiend : 

With the strong wind she wrestled, then flew to my side — 

Said silverly , ' ' Haste with me ! — ^now for a ride ! 

O'er the breadth of a world, in a martial array, 

The forests are moving — so up and away !" • 

Away and away through the billowy air — 

One arm clasped around me, her long wavy hair 

Streamed back like a pennon of silk to the wind. 

As we left the still town and its glimmer behind. 

Away and away o'er the mountains and meads, 

I darted, upborne by no magical steeds, 

But buoyed by the hand of my glorying Elm, 

Whose wishes were wings that no storm could o'erwhelm. 



114 THE ELM-S*LPH. 

We paused in mid air, and " Look downward !" slie cried, 

" O'er a battle-ground, now, like tke eagles, we ride." 

I gazed and I quailed at the dizzying height. 

Made giddier still by the vagueness of night — 

But, gathering heart, the horizon I scanned, 

As it circled about, like a maelstrom of land ; 

Wide — wide as eternity, towered its bound. 

And, deeply below us, the world spun around ! 

Then nearer and slower it wheeled to my sight, 

As we sank gently down from the wildering height. 

It ceased, and my soul ! — what a vision I saw. 

As I looked down intently with shuddering awe — 

The forests were marching with far-shaking tread, 

As if ages of men had been raised from the dead ; 

Interminable armies — a dark movinor throno; — 

Were crossing and wheeling and pressing along, 

And ranks upon ranks they were stretching afar. 

Till they moved o'er the face of a just setting star. 

Down, down we alighted, the Elm-sylph and I, 

On a mountain that lifted its bare summit high. 

And why are yon trees on these thunder-scarr'd rocks ? 

And why does the giant one shake his wild locks ? 

" 'Tis the Emperor Elm !" said the sylph as she kneeled, 



THE ELM-SYLPH. 115 

" And he rcarsTials the trees to a last battle-field !" 

I gazed at the Shape, and it seemed both to be 

A warrior king and a towering tree, 

That strode in his pride, looking loftily down. 

And royally nodding his broad leafy crown. 

I saw all his gestures, but heard not his words. 

As he "-athered around him his counseling lords : — 

A willow that bowed with its courtliest grace ; 

A birch with its ruffles and silvery lace ; 

A veteran oak and a tall gallant pine. 

Who spoke of the Danube, the Elbe, and the Rhine ; 

A rough, stalwart hemlock ; a cedar bedight 

With helmet and lance, like a chivalrous knight ; 

A chestnut and maple and sycamore old, 

In red autumn dresses, emblazoned with gold. 

I heard their low murmur and little beside, 

Till the Emperor Elm, with a hurrying stride, 

Advanced to the brink of the rock's giddy brow, 

And waved his broad hand to the forests below.' 

" Halt ! — halt, and attend ye !" he shouted aloud. 

And a hush smote along the tumultuous crowd. 

Like a surge circling out where a Titan had hurled 

An Alp into seas that engirdle a world. 



116 THE ELM-SYLPH. 

" Halt ! — halt, and attend ye, my gallant array, 

And list to the words that I hasten to say. 

No longer to stand like insensible mutes, 

It is given us to-night to unloosen our roots — 

To wield our lithe arms, to step forth at our will, 

By valley and mountain, by river and rilL 

The term of our bondage and groaning is o'er ; 

We start from our sleep with tempestuous roar. 

And while all the nations lie closer and cower, 

And mutter of storms, 'tis the Trees' waking hour. 

We fight not each other, with man's demon lust. 

But one common foe let us trample to dust. 

For men, with the axe and the furious fires, 

Have slain us and lighted our funeral pyres ; 

They have sawn us asunder, they pile up our bones, 

And call them their cities, their temples, their thrones : 

They drink from our skulls, or, invoking the breeze, 

They ride in our skeletons over the seas ; 

They pierce us with shot, and they make of us wheels 

To drag the hot cannon where red Battle reels. 

Oh, dark are the traflScs we help them to wage, 

And dark are the ages of sorrow and rage ! 

Battalions, stand firm ! — for the dawn breaks afar 

That will startle the world with the earthquake of war. 



THE ELM-SYLPH. 117 

Await ye the watchword — then pass it around, 

Till the rim of the heavens bend aside at the sound ; 

Keep close in your ranks, every squadron and square, 

Then rush like the whirlwinds ingulfing the air. 

On cities and palaces fearlessly fall. 

And leave not a roof or a man of them all. 

Oh rich is the blood that shall deluge the earth. 

And sweeten the soil that has nursed us to birth !" 

He ceased. Like the roar of the triumphing sea, 

When it surges aloud on a far distant lee. 

Re-echoed applauses ran sounding away 

Wherever the listening wilderness lay. 

The Elm-spirit rocked on the shuddering air, 

That loosened and lifted her beautiful hair, 

As she clung to my arm, and extended her hand 

Where circled the billowy ocean of land. 

I looked, and the daylight was brightening the scene, 

And changing the landscape from duskness to green ; 

The forests seemed watching with myriad eyes, 

Awaiting the war-cry to shout and to rise ; — 

A flush on the hills and a flash on the streams. 

And the sun has arisen with far-slanting beams ! 

" Advance !" and " Advance !" is the shout in the air, 

And thousands of scimitars mingle their glare ; 



118 THE EliM-SYLPH. 

The Imperial Elm — lo, he leaps from the rock ! — 

The forests are stepping with deafening shock — 

A sentinel aspen has tremblingly fled — 

Dense volumes of dust to the zenith are spread. 

Ho ! — ho ! — what a drumming of wings in the air, 

What a howling of beasts from their down-trampled lair, 

What a screaming of birds as they hurry away — 

No need of the gong and the trumpet to-day ! 

On, on rush the forests in dust-rolling gloom, 

Like a gathering universe summoned to doom ; 

My Soul ! — they are climbing this mount's dizzy height — 

Save — crush me, ye rocks, from the terrible sight ! 
****** 

My storm-riven Elm tree ! — ah ! little I deemed 
Thou wert slain by my side as I heedlessly dreamed. 



THE ICEBEHa. 



We saw it in the dawning liglit — 
A crystal mountain, dim and vast, 

That rose abruptly thrice the height 
Of any gallant vessel's mast ; 

And far away, on either hand, 

It slept, a pale and shadowy land. 

The surf was dashing at its base, 
And all its sun-tipt summits sent 

Their rillets foaming down its face ; 
It seemed a floating continent 

That, broken from the arctic world, 

To warmer zones the tides had whirled. 



120 THE ICEBERG. 

The sun arose ; the precipice 

Blazed forth in lights of every hue, 

Like shivered rainbows in the ice — 
The clearest green, the brightest blue, 

Pure amber, purple, ruddy gold. 

And silver spires, serene and cold. 

Unnumbered forms of beauty rare. 

Pale moons and meteors, suns and stars. 

And jewels such as sultans wear. 

Seemed prisoned in with brazen bars. 

Or as a thousand crystal halls 

Were set for royal festivals. 

We gazed until the glowing ice. 

So clear and high, so bright and broad, 

Grew like a dream of Paradise — 
The New Jerusalem of God, 

That, fairer than the clouds of even. 

Was seen descending out of heaven. 

The gates of solid pearl were there ; 

The glassy streets, the polished walls, 
Were glistening ia the morning air, 



THE ICEBERG. 121 

As if with precious minerals — 
With jasper, sapphire, emerald, 
Too clazzlino; brio'ht to be beheld. 

Around the spires, the wreathing mist 
Seemed angel-forms that flew or walked 

On battlements of amethyst, 

And there in sweet communion talked, 

While we below were souls that wait 

To enter through the glorious gate. 

Alas, that with so heavenly dreams, 
A thought of terror now should come ; 

The mount that thus in beauty beams, 
To sudden death our lives doom — 

May whirl itself with fearful force, 

And sink the ship that dares its course. 



AURORA. 



There was a goddess of the ancient time, 

Who, every morning, in a saffron robe, 
Was wont, from ocean's brim, the sky to climb, 

And in her rosy car speed round, the globe ; 
Her steeds were snowy white or flaming red ; 

Around her twined and danced the lovely Hours ; 
A flying Cupid waved his torch o'erhead. 

And all the way she scattered dewy flowers. 

From out the dawning east she ever came. 
Pursuing swift the starry-mantled Night ; 

She heralded Apollo's wheels of flame. 
And flung apart the blazing gates of light. 

She was not seen of men, but in those days 
When fancies pure and beautiful were born, 



AUROUA. 123 

The virgiQ daybreak, with its blushing rays, 
"Was uamed Aurora — we but call it Morn. 

There was, long since, a tribe of dark-brow'd men. 

Whose fires were lit along an inland lake ; 
They walked the lords of mountain, vale and glen. 

And o'er the waters traced the silver wake. 
Or sped in light canoes before the storms ; 

They passed away as silent as they came. 
But though no more are seen their gallant forms, 

The brave Aui'oras still are known to fame. 

There is, by that same lake, a village now. 

That lines the shore where broadest lie the waters ; 
Nor does the wide young Western Empire know 

More noble sons than here, nor lovelier daughters ; 
The shaded streets look out upon the lake. 

And deep embowered gardens stoop to drink 
The waves that evermore in splendor break. 

Or, hushed to rest, in glassy silence sink. 

Two shallops anchor yonder, side by side, — 

The " Ellen Douglas" and the " Water-Sprite"— 
Fit emblems of Undine and Malcolm's bride ; 



» 



124 AUEOKA. 

Two steamers rush upon their foamy flight ; 
A spire and fifty lindens point to heaven, — 

A famed academy beneath their giant shade, 
As if to them, like warriors, it were given 

To guard the land with lifted spear and blade. 

And there are waterfalls and singing streams 

Deep hidden in the hills, and sycamores 
Along the pebbled beach, and sunset gleams 

Far mirrored from the purple western shores, 
And white-wing'd boats, and many a moonlight sail. 

Regattas, rides, and Festivals of Flora — 
A thousand charms that would adorn a tale 

If laid among tliy quiet scenes, Auroka. 

Oh, rosy-blushing herald of the morn. 

Who, o'er the hills, salutes Cayuga's wave ! 
Oh, dark-brow'd spirits on the night winds borne. 

If yet there linger phantoms of the brave ! — 
Say ! is there in this round and blooming sphere, 

A sweeter spot to dream a life away. 
Than where among the trees is braided here 

The gem-like namesake of the dawning Day ? 



WELL'S FALLS. 



Behold the flashing waterfall ! 
The rocks are bathed in sunset's beam, 

The waters, like the syrens, call. 
And spii'it-like they coldly gleam — 
The misty-mantled naiads of the stream, 

Now loud and full the cascades roar, 
Now low and soft they seem to sing, 

As when the wildwood warblers pour 
Their music in the ear of Spring, 
And make the vocal forests wildly ring. 

But fairer than the spirit-shapes 
That fancy conjures from the spray, 



126 well's falls. 

And with its jeweled vapor drapes, 
Are those who gaze with me to-day — 
The votaries that here their worship pay. 

And sweeter than the dreamy sound 
That trembles in the waterfall, 

And echoes from the rocks around — 
More sweet than Nature's voices all 
Are those that to the woods and waters call. 

The trees, the shies, the clouds are fair, 
And beautiful this woodland bower — 

Its lulling tones and cooling air ; 
But lovelier than stream or flower, 
Are those who share with me this happy hour. 



CONDOLENCE. 



Say not tliy soul is crushed, my friend, 

Or that thy dreams of happiness, 
At manhood's dawn, have found an end 

In gloom and tears and grief's excess ; 
Fly not to yonder new-made grave, 

AVhere lies the loved and crumbling clay. 
For, tears nor prayers can ever save 

A cherished form from swift decay. 

But little that could once rejoice 
Is buried in the hungry tomb ; 

It holds no music of her voice — 
No youthful warmth and bloom ; 

It holds no sparkla of her eye, 
No beaming virtues of her mind, 



128 CONDOLENCE. 

No ■winning tone or parting sigh, 
No thrilling step or greetings kind. 

The heavenly graces of her soul — 

All that is spiritual and pure 
Hath reached its bright, eternal goal, 

And will forever there endure ; 
All human charms and sympathies — 

All that the loved can here impart, 
Are shrined within our memories, 

And live in many a living heart. 

Then mourn no more the spirit flown 

To meet the welcome of its Grod ; 
Her visioned form shall aye look down, 

By night and day, at home, abroad, 
To guard thy steps and bless thy dreams ; 

The sacred memory of the dead 
Is like a pillared light that beams 

A moving glory high o'erhead. 



THE CITY OF THE DEAD. 



Go forth, and breathe the purer air, with me. 

And leave the city's sounding streets ; 
There is another city, sweet to see, 

Whose heart with no delirium beats ; 
The solid earth beneath it never feels 

The dance of joy, the rush of care, 
The jar of toil, the mingled roll of wheels ; 

But all in peace and beauty there. 

No spacious mansions stand in stately rows 

Along that city's silent ways ; 
No lofty wall, nor level pavement, glows, 

Unshaded from the summer rays ; 
No costly merchandise is heaped around. 

Nor pictures stay the passer by, 



130 THE CITY OF THE DEAD. 

Nor plumed soldiers march to music's sound; 
Nor toys and trifles tire the eye. 

[fhe narrow streets are fringed with living green, 

And weave about in mazes there ; 
The many hills bewilder all the scene, 

And shadows veil the noonday glare. 
No clanging bells ring out the fleeting hours, 

Bet sunlight glimmers softly thro', 
And marks the voiceless time in golden showers 

On velvet turf and lakelets blue. 

The palaces are sculptured shafts of stone 

That gleam in beauty thr&'^he- •trees ; t , 
The cottages are mounds with flowers o'ergrown ; 

No princely church the stranger sees, 
But all the grove its pointed arches rears, 

And tinted lights shine thro' the trees, 
And prayers are rained in every mourner's tears 

Who for the dead in silence grieves. 

And when dark night descends upon the tombs, 

No reveler's song, nor watchman's voice 
Is here ; no music comes from lighted rooms 



THE CITY OF THE DEAD. 131 

Where swift feet fly and hearts rejoice ; 
'Tis darkness, silence all ; no sound is heard 

Except the wind that sinks and swells, 
The lonely whistle of the midnight bird, 

And brooks that ring their crystal bells. 

A city strange and still ! — its habitants 

Are warmly housed, yet they are poor — 
Are poor, yet have no wish, nor woes and wants ; 

The broken heart is crushed no more, 
No love is interchanged, nor bought and sold, 

Ambition sleeps, the innocent 
Are safe, the miser counts no more his gold, 

But rests at last and is content. 

A city strange and sweet ! — its dwellers sleep 

At dawn, and in meridian light, — 
At sunset still they dream in slumber deep, 

Nor wake they in the weary night ; 
And none of them shall feel the hero's kiss 

On Sleeping Beauty's lip that fell. 
And woke a palace from a trance of bliss 

That long had bound it by a spell. 



132 THE CITV OF THE DEAD. OMENS. 

A city strange and sad ! — we walk tte grounds, 

Or seek some mount, and see afar 
The living cities shine, and list the sounds 

Of throbbing boat and thundering car. 
And we may go ; but all the dwellers here, 

In autumn's ^lush, in winter's snow, 
In spring and summer's bloom, from year to year 

They ever come, and never go ! 



OMENS. 



This, Harrietta, is your wedding morning. 

And may your hopes be ever bright 
As are the iris hues the trees adorning, 

But, unlike them, without a blight ; 
And, freely as the autumn skies are weeping. 

May blessings greet you from on high ; 
And, idly as the sounding winds are sweeping, 

May ills and sorrows pass you by. 



Oh, if 'tis wisdom not to love 

Where love responsive meets us never, 
The folly I will yet approve — 

To love the loveliest forever. 

The heart can never be directed ; 

But one our Fancy's want can fill ;" 
And if for this I be rejected. 

For this same reason love I still. 

Nor do I place my heart too high. 
While to myself I yet am true ; 

My worthiness who will deny, 
Since I can love no one but you ? 



IMITATIONS 



FLOEALIE. 



A PORTRAIT FROM LIFE, IN TENNYSON S TINTS. 



Lofty little Floralie, 

Dimpled, dazzling Floralie, 
Throned witbin my inmost heart, 
There thou shalt be as thou art. 

My soul-enfolded, pure ideal. 
Ever present to my thought, 

Mine eyes shall wake and close 
On thy image, though unsought. 

Fadeless, changeless, still it glows- 
Still it sparkles, dimples, dances, 
In my waking, sleeping fancies, 

As if no phantom, it were real. 
I cannot clasp nor follow it, 
For, like thyself, 'twill ever flit 



138 ^ FLOR-VLIE. 

With a far off gooddess-grace. 
With chaining, yet forbidding eye ; 
I bless, I ban that little face, 
Floating ever in airy space ; 
I frown and mutter, smile and sigh. 
Four years I saw thee budding, 
From a tiny, romping girl, 
With dancing eye and careless curl, 
Darting off with sudden whirl, 
Half in glee, and half surprise, 
.AYhen I praised thy jetty eyes ; 
I saw four summers flooding 
Thine eyes with love and light. 
Until they seemed. 
So full they beamed. 
Like drops of dreamy darkness, right 
From the very heart of night, — 
Each tipt and burning with a bright 

And glorious star, I saw thy form 
Round into rosy loveliness — 

Each wavy oixtline, full and warm. 
Of thine ivory neck and arm. 
Filling as fills the maiden moon, 
Ere maketh she the night as noon ; 



FLOBALIE. 139 

Eaeh long and sunny chesnut tress, 
'Neath wbich thy girlish glances shot, 
Now gathered in a Grecian knot 
Demure and simple. Yet no look 

Of nun-like meekness didst thou wear : 
For still the dimples of thy cheek 

Danced in and out with roguish leer, 
As if a playing hide and seek ; 
And while they danced thou wouldst not brook 
The liberty their beckoning gave ; 
For thou recoilcdst proudly grave, 
Burying thy softly-moulded chin 
In thy cushioned, haughty throat. 

That, curving lightly downward, bid begin 
To bud into a second cherub-chin. 
And ever from thy liquid eyes. 
Like sunlit rain from summer skies, 
Or gushings from a crystal well. 
Soul-sparkles overflowed and fell ; 
And ever from thy rose-lips musical, 
A. silver eloquence would slide. 
thou so beautiful and wise ! — 
A very sage in fairy-guise. 

So full of gentleness and pride — 



140 FLORALIE. 

The holy pride of loveliness ; 
'T would seem that wayward Nature tried 
How much of beauty she might press, 
How much of intellect and grace, 
In how little, charming space. 
Blest be IW air thou dost displace, — 

Or mo vest not ; for not of earth, 
But all of heaven and all divine, 

Thou canst not turn from dust to dust, 
But, cloud dissolved to cloud, thou must 
Exhale to skies that gave thee birth. 
I would not, could I, call thee mine, 
Nor wed thee, — nay I would not trust 
To see thee with these tranced eyes 
Steeped deep in melting memories, 
Lest it should break the dreamy charm 
That lingers in thy flitting form, — 
Lest the living, breathing Real 
Shatter the statue-like Ideal, 
That, shrined within my early heart, 
Has gathered to itself a part 
Of every ripening fancy, till 
A shadowy glory, warm and still, 
Doth all my silent spirit fill. 



THE LONE ISLAND. 
(in the moorish stvle.) 



Whem creation was finislied, and man trod the earth, 

But one thing was wanting to gladden the scene, 
And woman then bloomed into beautiful birth, 

With her soul-flashing eye and majestical mien ; 
And thus, fair Cayuga, when thy sparkling sheet 

AVas fashioned the lovliest lake of the West, 
Ere thy beauty transcendent was wholly complete, 

One island was added to jewel thy breast. 

A lone little islet, all tangled and wild, 

With a few drooping trees for its natural dress, 

It is lulled by the waves like a slumbering child, 
Or is lapt in the calm of the water's caress ; 

It smiles in the sunshine, and moans in the storm, 



142 TUK LONE ISLAND. 

Now mirror'd ia stillness, now crested with foam, 
It looms in the tempest, a phantom-ship's form, 
And sleeps in the starlight, a syren's sweet home. 

Here the carolling bird, from a sunnier shore, 

Now builds undisturbed her cool summer nest, 
While here in the winter, their wanderings o'er, 

The wearied waterfowl safely may rest ; 
And here we might fancy that many a band 

Of silken-winged fairies inhabit the bowers, 
And launch their frail shells on the smooth silver sand. 

Or dance in the moonlight and sleep in the flowers. 

The goal of the swimmer — the bold Indian youth 

Here breathed and hallooed in his joy of the feat. 
Or silently thought how he plighted his truth 

To his moccasin'd maid in this quiet retreat ; 
The near circling shore the old warrior once sought, 

When the waters were still and the breezes were bland^ 
And musing alone of the beauty, he thought 

Of the happier isles of the far spirit-land. 

The Past with its memories.hallows the spot. 
And dreams of the Futui-e are hovering o'er ; 



THE LONE ISLAND. 143 

Perhaps it may nestle a fisherman's cot, 

With its blue curling smoke, and the nets on the 
shore ; 
Or pleasure may choose this secluded retreat, 

And build up a temple of classic design — 
There to lounge in the hour of meridian heat. 

Or revel with festival, music and wine. 

Lone Isle ! may thy beauty unchangingly rest 

In its negligent grace as the years wander by — ' 
As proud as the gem on nobility's breast — 

'As fair as a star when alone in the sky ;' 
And though thou art barren to seekers of gain, 

With no hidden treasures of ill-gotten pelf, 
Thou teachest that nought was created in vain. 

And that Beauty has value enough in itself. 



TAGHCANIC FALLS. 



Ye bards and travelers ! Oh talk no more 

Of Scotland's highland crags and lyns and lakes, 

Nor tell us how the waters at Lodore 

Come down, nor how the Rhine in fury breaks, 

Nor how at Reichenbach the torrents pour. 
And all the solid ground at Staubach shakes ; 

I care no more for these, nor sigh to see 

The Falls of Terni and of Tivoli. 

I've read enough of those, and seen Niagara, 
Which is the king of cataracts forever, 

And it certainly a sight to stagger a 

Poor poet's or a painter's best endeavor ; 

And other Falls I've seen, but such a crag or a 
Remarkable cascade beheld I never 



TAGHCANIO FALLS. 145 

As that which gave me quite a poet's panic 
When late I gazed upon our own Taghcanic. 

It lies about (I like to be particular) 

One mile from Lake Cayuga's western shore ; 

On either side the rocks rise perpendicular 

Three hundred thirty feet and something more. 

And all the stream diffused in drops orbicular, 
Descends in wreaths and falling mists that pour 

Two hundred feet and ten, or nearly so, 

Before they form again the stream below. 

A friend of mine, as sweet as any nun. 
Yet not as solemn, thought it like a barrel 

Of falling flour, and so would any one ; 
But I remember nothing so nonpareil 

As the figure used by Alfred Tennyson, 

Who ' 'dangling water-smoke' ' does not compare ill 

To " broken purposes that waste in air" — 

Look in his " Princess," and you'll find it there. 

A tourist, in his famous Alpine travels. 

In speaking of a like cascade and glen, 
Some very striking moral truth unravels 

7 



146 TAGHCANIC FALLS. 

Concerning streams diffused in air, and then 
Once more collected ; but I think that cavils 

Are justly interposed by critics, when 
One tries to turn all beauty to utility, 
No matter with how much confest ability. 

I better like the thought of one whose look 
At this surpassing wide and deep abyss. 

Led him to ask how great a spoon it took 

When Madam Nature scooped a gulf like this ; 

Indeed, 'tis very hard to think a brook, 
Though it for ages roar and foam and hiss. 

And wear and tear with all its mad-cat strength. 

Could scratch so deep a chasm a mile in length. 

Eut these are thoughts unworthy of the theme. 
Or, as the rhetoricians, term it — bathos ; 

And so I'll get up inspiration's steam. 
And try my hand at poetry and pathos ; 

For it is pleasanter to weave a dream 

Than in a jest to throw one's time away thus ; 

The Falls I therefore will apostrophize 

In metaphors proportioned to their size. 



TAGUCANIC FALLS. 147 

I hardly like it — this poetic way 

Of calling on the deep blue sea to roll, 

And urging cataracts no more to stay, 

And recommending stars to shine, is droll,*^ 

As if they would the voice of man obey — 
As if the rocks and waters have a soul ; 

But since it is the custom I will try 

A verse or two of such sublimity. 

Roll on, Taghcanic's wild and shouting stream ! 

Here darkly winding in thy gloomy deeps, 
And there reflecting back the sunny gleam 

That slants athwart the cliffs and dizzy steeps ; 
As wild and varied thou, as is the dream 

That hovera o'er the couch where Beauty sleeps — 
As wild and fearless thou as those whose claim 
To this our land first gave to thee thy name. 

'Tis sweet to look on thee when summer's morn 
Hath touched thy lordly battlements with gold, 

And when the mists that of the night are born, 
In rosy wreaths and clouds are upward roll'd ; 

'Tis sweet to see thy walls, with ruin worn, 

O'erhung with fragrant pines and gray with mould, 



148 TAGHCANIC FALLS. 

All silvered with tlie moon-beams cold and white, 
Or blushing in the torches' ruddy light. 

Thine amphitheatre, ascending wide, 
Calls up a vision of the storied Past — 

The chariots coursing swiftly, side by side, 
Within the Coliseum's circle vast. 

The gladiator who in silence died. 

The shower'of garlands on the victor cast. 

The deadly stroke — the shout — the cruel throng — 

I gladly turn from thoughts of death and wrong. 

I love to think that in thy rocky walls. 

Where stands the strangely perfect gothic door. 

The genii have reared their magic halls. 
With crystal column and with pearly floor, 

And fountains where the tinkling water falls, 
And arching roofs with jewels studded o'er— • 

A mystic realm in secret silence bound, 

Until the spell to open it is found. 

I love to think that flitting fay and elf 

Are hidden in thy darkling nooks and dells, 
Or that, beneath the cascade's jutting shelf. 



TAGHCANIC FALLS. 149 

A spirit, matcUess in her beauty, dwells, 
And wraps those misty robes about herself, 

And ever sings and weaves her wondrous spells, 
Until revealed at some fond dreamer's call — 
The lovely Undine of the waterfall ! 

What else I choose to dream is my afiair ; 

It is a very wild and lonely scene. 
And has a picturesque and noble air 

With all its foam and rocks and forests green j 
Nor is it probable that many care 

For it, except to say they have been there ; 
And doubtless, quite as honestly as Pickwick, 
They'll tell you — 'tis a nice place for a pic-nic. 



PROSE-POEMS. 



NEW WONDERS 



0? THE MAMMOTH CAVE; 



As a full account of the astonishing discoveries, now 
first announced, is to appear in a scientific journal, from 
the abler pen of the discoverer — Prof Biglie, (who should 
not be confounded with Prof. Liebig) a hasty sketch only 
is at present offered, in order to call attention to the facts, 
and prepare the public mind for them. The substance of 
the discovery is, the existence of a race of winged and 
Bcaly men, (named by Prof. B. the Anthropoptera, from 
anthropos — man, and pteron — wing) together with a 
semi-civilized society, republics and kingdoms — in short, 
a busy continent beneath the one we tread upon. The 
reasons for suppressing every breath of the news, will be 
intimated in the course of this sketch. 

To throw the brief account into a connected form, I may 
state that Prof. B., the guide — " Stephen," and myself, 
composed a party that, in four days beginning with 

7* 



154 NEW WONDERS OF THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 

September lOth., 1849, visited nearly every avenue 
and nook of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky — Grorin's 
dome, the Park room, Indian avenue, Blue Spring 
branch, Maclure's path, Merriam's avenue, Cleaveland's 
cabinet, Serena's arbor, etc. On the evening of the 
fourth day. Sept, 12th, we were returning to the Main 
avenue, when the fancy took us to make a second and last 
tour of the splendid Gothic avenue, and the subterranean 
scenery to which it leads. We had followed one of the 
Low Branches nearly to its termination; Prof. B. had 
loitered in the rear; the guide and myself were retracing 
our steps ; but had not quite reached Bonaparte's dome, 
when we heard the Professor, from the darkness near us, 
calling out "Stop! — here! — here!" We turned, and 
saw a pit on the left side of the cave, illumined with his 
torch, and himself scrambling to the surface. With signs 
of extreme agitation, he urged us to follow him, saying 
that he had heard strange noises. We let ourselves down 
to a depth of six feet, into the pit, which is about the same 
measure in diameter; finding foot-place, we followed 
Prof. B. down the cavern, which then inclined at an 
angle of forty-five degrees, and continued in the same 
general direction for two hundred yards, where it turned 
abruptly to the left. Here the Professor motioned us to 
be silent, and pointed forward where, within four feet of 
us, the tunnel was completely closed up by a curtain of 
stalactite. We listened, and to our utter amazement, dis- 
tinctly heard voices beyond, conversing in a thin, sharp 
tone, and in an unknown language ! Soon our wonder 



NEW WONDERS OF THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 155 

was heightened to terror by the sound of heavy pounding 
and the splashing of water, mingled with the most un- 
earthly shrieks and laughter. As we involuntarily turned 
away, the Professor suddenly noticed, and called our at- 
tention to the fact, that the obstructing curtain of stalactite 
was thin and translucent, and dimly shining with a pale 
light from beyond it. This had been before unnoticed ia 
the glare of our torches. 

We now returned to Bonaparte's dome, and held a 
consultation. The result of it was that, in ten days there- 
after, we had procured, with the utmost secrecy, an iron 
door from the foundery of the Messrs. A., of Louisville, 
by way of the Ohio and Grreen rivers. The iron door has 
a window of close and strong grating, and a frame so 
shaped as just to fit a carefully measured section of the 
cavern, within a foot of the place where then stood the 
above mentioned curtain. The frame was also constructed 
with heavy hinges, so that it could be folded up and easily 
carried into the narrow tannel, the door itself being 
sufficiently small. 

Five stout workmen were next enlisted and pledged to 
secrecy ; a storehouse car was rudely built ; and, on the 
night of the 24th, the iron door, together with drilling 
tools, crow-bars, and knives and pistols, transported into 
the cave, some two miles and a half to the scene of opera- 
tions. We arrived there, after two hours of hard labor; 
the same wonderful sounds were heard ; and, lest the par- 
ty of robbers (as we suspected them to be) might break 
through the natural screen, on hearing the sound of our 



156 NEW WONDERS OP THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 

work, a pistol was fired as a cliallenge. Instantly, a com 
bined shriek, as of a hundred apes, was heard, and the 
sound of retreating footsteps ; then all was still. In two 
hours more, we had drilled holes for the iron pins that 
were to fasten the frame to its place ; and soon the work 
was done, and the door locked. It should be mentioned 
that a pistol was fired by us, at intervals during the pro- 
cess, and that several times the same retreating sounds 
were discernible, but without the cries of terror ; also, 
that soon after the first discharge, the sound of a seemingly 
distant bell, rapidly tolled, continued for at least fifteen 
minutes. 

The Professor now assumed the honor of breaking 
through the calcareous partition, and revealing the myste- 
ries beyond. A crow-bar was passed through the grating 
of the door, and, with one blow, half of the beautiful 
screen was shivered to fragments. How shall one des- 
cribe our speechless surprise at the scene disclosed ? 
Crowding to the window, we beheld a magnificent cavern, 
of great height and width, lined with beautiful spars, illu- 
mined with a pale light like that of the moon, and, most 
astounding of all, filled with the vanishing forms of crea- 
tures that looked like white dragons, flying in the air, and 
and running swiftly on the ground, while their shrill, 
treble cries pierced our ears ! They soon disappeared, 
and our party, well armed, entered the hall, one man be- 
ing left as door-keeper. 

We found the cavern, in its general features, much 
like the well-known Gothic avenue, and with a large pool 



NEW WONDEKS OP THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 157 

of water near the entrance. Passing on, at our approacli 
the strange beings, some distance off, would suddenly 
start from behind the stalagmite columns, and fly to a 
greater distance, biding again. Now, for the first time, 
we noticed that the walls and pillars were apparently carv- 
ed into grotesque images, in many places ; and the Pro- 
fessor discovered, on close inspection, that the pervading 
light came from a new species of phosphorescent fungus, 
completely coating the rocks where they were left un- 
touched. 

As a measure both of policy and safety, we at length 
paused, and the guide slowly advanced alone, leaving his 
torch with us, and holding out the Professor's gold chain 
and watch, in order that he might attract the creatures, 
whether they should prove to be irrational, human or infer- 
nal. It was a bold venture, but resulted successfully ; in 
a little while, one of the dragons was lured from his hi- 
ding place, became familiar with our brave "Stephen," 
and, by attempts to converse in language and signs, set- 
tled the doubt concerning his human intelligence. Many 
others of his species soon followed ; and so unsuspicious 
and simple were their natures, so ready indeed, like sav- 
ages who first behold Europeans, were they to worship 
us as diviue, that we acquired their entire confidence. 
Leaving the full and scientific report of the discoveries to 
the Professor's pen, I will give a few results of our five 
months' intercourse with the anomalous beings, closing 
with a brief description of a recent visit to the distant cav- 
erns or realms of " King Nono." 



158 NEW WONDERS OS" THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 

It was during the late examiaation of the stupendous 
hall where the ancestors of Nono are entombed, or rather 
suspended, that the fact of most importance to science 
and to curiosity, was developed. Before this, we had con- 
cluded that the Anthropoptera might possibly have de- 
scended from the Aztec race of Mexico, or the mound- 
builders, or some other superterranean human race ; but 
that, most probably, they are an entirely distinct genus of 
mammalia. And this conclusion will not be a matter of 
surprise, considering the wonderful transformations the 
nations (they are nothing less) of these creatures have 
undergone. They all closely resemble the first one who 
approached us ; and imagine our surprise, our positive 
conviction that he was of a new genus of animals, when 
we examined him in close proximity. His name is Oo. 
He is seven feet high, measures twelve inches around the 
waist, two inches around the wrist and ancle, and weighs 
only twenty pounds — a fact not at all wonderful when we 
consider, not only his form, but the effect of a peculiar 
diet, and a perfectly dry atmosphere on this race of beings, 
for many centmies. The mummy, found near the Maia 
Avenue of the cave, and which was to be seen so late as 
1813, weighed but fourteen pounds ; and, in Paris, a hu- 
man body has been reduced to ten pounds, by long expo- 
sure to heated air. 

But this is the least extraordinary fact concerniflg Oo^ 
and his race. From head to foot, and thiough and 
through, the tall attenuated creatures are of an almost 
colorless transparency — doubtless in cong.e(X]jeaco of tha 



NEVf WONDERS OP THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 159 

absence of solar light for so many generations ; tLis circum- 
stance, in connection with the proverbially salubrious 
quality of the cave's atmosphere, may account also for 
their great height of person. It is a common thing for 
vegetables, in a dark cellar, to grow very slender and lux- 
uriant, and to lose their color. But the next, curious 
features of the Anthropoptera are their small, delicate, 
transparent scales, covering all except the anterior portion 
of the body ; the glass-like fin, like a fairy's wing, protru- 
ding from the back, the extended thorns of the spine evi- 
dently forming the rays of the fin, and being pointed like 
those of the Acanthopterygiaa order of fishes ; and, last- 
ly, the strikingly piscine cast of the countenance, the 
whole being of a wedge shape and a beautiful softness of 
texture, the region of the mouth tinted of a faint rose col- 
or, the nose somewhat lost in the upper lip, the chin reced- 
ing into the neck, the remarkably fall eye standing out up- 
on a flat cheek, and the ears multiplied into a series of 
gills. This approximation of feature to that of fish, is 
not so unaccountable since the ancestors of the race, pre- 
served in a sort of Westminster Abbey, have been found 
to bear a close resemblance to th ) Aztec physiognomy, the 
nose being so prominent, and the face so receding from the 
tip of the nose both to the crown of the head and to the 
throat, that the change to fish-like features was easy and 
natural. But what produced the change is something of a 
question. It could not, of course, have resulted from so 
many generations feeding on nothing but the eyeless fish 
found in great abundance in the rivers of this part of 



160 NEW WONDERS OF THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 

the Cave. It might have been gradually caused by the 
imao-ination dwellino; on the fish that form their exclusive 
diet and are the only living things, but themselves, which 
these beings could contemplate ; and it might have been, in 
part, the pliant adaptation of Nature to that exigency by 
which, without fishing apparatus, they are obliged to plunge 
into the water and pursue their prey. We frequently ob- 
served them in this act, and it is noticeable that, with close- 
ly folded wings, they swam, not so much by motion of 
the limbs, as by a waving vibration of the body, like fish 
— so soft, slender and flexible is their whole structure. 

The last, and perhaps most singular distinction of the 
Anthropoptera, is their wings, from which is derived'the 
name given them by Professor B. These are formed of 
a thin, transparent membrane, attached, precisely like the 
bat's, to the thigh, the side, the under surface of 
the arm and thence extending to the length of five 
feet, the phalanges of the fingers being extremely and 
delicately elongated^ like the bat's, to sustain the vast mem- 
branous web or sail. The nails of the thumb and toes 
had assumed a strong hook-shape, being about three 
inches long ; how manifestly adapted to seize on their 
aquatic prey, to climb the caverns, and prevent a sudden 
fall in the darkness of those parts of the cave not lit by 
the phosphorescent fungi ! We observed, too, that they 
slept while suspended by these hooks from the walls. 
Countless nerves are also distributed over the membrane 
of the wing, as in the case of the bat, thus warning their 
possessors, though in utter darkness, of every approach to 



NEW WONDERS OP THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 161 

the sharp rocks and pointed spars ; indeed, so sensitive are 
these nerves, the Anthropoptera seemed to fly as rap- 
idly and safely in the darkest as in the lightest avenues. 
How evidently has Nature, by a slow process, thus guard- 
ed them from injury in motion, from those frequent pits 
in the cave where, without wings, they would be dashed 
dead ; and how is their confinement here thus compensated 
by a new, happy power, and their range of enjoyment ex- 
tended ! 

As before remarked, we did not seriously entertain the 
idea of their Adamic origin ; but the fact is settled by the 
remains in one of their Halls of the Dead. Here, as 
we have learned from certain hieroglyphics deciphered by 
our winged friend Oo (who is quite an antiquarian in the 
records of his race) — here are the actual remains of the 
eleven ancestors of the Anthropoptera, who, three thou- 
sand years ago, were accidentally enclosed in this endless 
blanch of the Mammoth Cave, by an earthquake which 
sank an immense mass of rock, completely and forever 
closing up the avenue by which they had entered. This 
spot, we afterwards visited, and found indications of the 
truth of the inscriptions; but none of the race, of course, had 
ever dreamed of the passage through which we entered, so 
entirely was it screened by the thin stalactite formation. 
To return to the point of enquiry, we found the eleven 
progenitors perfectly preserved by the dry air, and exhibit- 
ing not one of the fish and bat characteristics of their de- 
Bcendents ! This fact, well known to them all, undoubt- 
edly procured us a more ready reception ; indeed they 



162 NEW WONDERS OF THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 

gave us to understand that the thunder of our pistols, and 
afterwards our strange bodies, (knowing nothing of dress) 
were the reasons of their extreme alarm. Our destitu- 
tion of wings and our flat, perpendicular faces immediately 
reminded them of the eleven mummies, and of the tradi- 
tions of the earthquake and the outer world, perpetuated 
by the hieroglyphic epitaphs. And, now, the fact of spe- 
cial interest is, that from the eleven, in a series of mum- 
mies ranged along the Hall, may be distinctly traced the 
gradual approximation of the race to its present type ! 
Nothing can be more unquestionable and interesting. And 
the circumstance that the eleven are only of the ordinary 
height of five and a half feet, decides that they were not 
of the same race with the giant men whose skeletons 
were long ago found by the nitre-miners, in and about 
the entrance of the Cave. 

Such is a running account of the appearance and origin 
of the Anthropoptera. Conceive our ever increasing 
interest in the really beautiful, human dragon-flies ! — 
our unabated wonder at their grotesque forms — so tall, so 
incredibly slender, so transparent that they seemed like 
living crystal, and their whole internal organization — the 
brain, the heart, the circulation of colorless blood — all 
could be seen at a glance ; their heads covered with silver 
hair, three feet in length ; their dorsal fins opened or fold- 
ed down at pleasure, like fans of glass ; their scales, coat- 
ing the back and sides, like a fairy armor of lucid snow- 
spangles ; their wings, each, as it were, the half of an 
umbrella of white, oiled silk, stretched on white bones as 



NEW WONDERS 01" THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 163 

delicate as willow-branches, and closely shut upon the 
body, or fanning the air, and sweeping an are of five 
feet radius ; and then the indescribable coup d'oeil form- 
ed by the long vistas of caverns resembling light- 
ed streets, gardens of lilies, temples, halls of statues, 
where the spirit-creatures were moving in countless num- 
bers, their wings and scales glistening in the soft, dreamy 
light of phosphorescence. Here they were darting like pale 
meteors, there poising on their qu.ivering sails, now sus- 
pended from the roof and now sliding up or down the col- 
umnar stalactites, at one moment walking in stateliness 
along the encrusted floor, at another diving into the still 
rivers and splashing the water in the wildest glee, their 
thin, clear voices all the while making melody as of innu- 
merable flutes ! The scene cannot be pictured — can on- 
ly be seen and felt. 

The reasons for suppressing this discovery so long, will 
now be appreciated. A premature disclosure would have 
defeated the purpose to cultivate the friendship of the An- 
thropoptera, and learn their mysteries — might, indeed, in 
the rush of rude visitors, have ended in bloodshed. Then, 
too, if any of the beings had been dragged forth, or suf- 
fered to come into the light of day, its unaccustomed rays 
would have tortured them like needle-points ; and the 
variable temperature of our air, especially a sudden tran- 
sition to our diet, would have resulted in immediate death 
to them. One of them, with his own consent, has been 
exported from the cave in a tight cage, carefully heated 
to the point of temperature of the cave — 52 degrees ; and 



164 NEW WONDERS OF THE MAMMOTH CAYE. 

the experiment is now four months in progress, how safely 
he can accommodate himself to solar light and our food, 
and, more than all, what physical changes will thus be 
produced. The results are already wonderful ; his body 
has increased in bulk, is assuming our proportions and 
fleshy opacity, the scales seem to be loosening, and the 
wings are withering away. Doubtless an asylum will 
eventually be erected for this end, and thus the Anthro- 
poptera will be restored to the world, and advanced to the 
dignity of American citizenship. One or two facts were 
developed in the dissection of bodies given us; they have 
the organs of amphibious animals, and their bones are hol- 
low tubes, without marrow, like those of birds ; this ex- 
plains still further, their buoyancy and light weight. We 
observed, also, that one eyeless fish, weighing two pounds, 
afforded twenty of them sufficient food for one day ; so 
light diet, and the fact that the dead bodies of all but the 
gentry and geniuses, are thrown into the rivers as food for 
the fish, account for the sustenance of the multitudes we 
saw in various avenues. The bell, by the way, which we 
heard before entering their abode, is a musical stalactite, 
struck as a tocsin of alarm to call together the myriad 
beings. It is much larger than the one destroyed many 
years ago, in another part of the cave. 

There is time only to hint disconnectedly at a few more 
facts. 

The apartments discovered seem not only to occupy the 
space between the well known Cataracts and the Eiver 
Styx, but also to underlie both, extending we know not 



'■ NEW WONDERS OF THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 165 

how far beyond. There is, likewise, a belief among the 
Anthropoptera, that a cavern two thousand miles in diam- 
eter, extends beyond to the eastward, and that it is inhab- 
ited ; if so, half of the United States and a part of the 
Atlantic, overhang an immense abyss formed by some geo- 
logical convulsion — a cavity that must be balanced by an- 
other beneath Asia. Columbus, it is well known, thus 
reasoned the existence of this continent. But the discov- 
eries already made, will warrant us in calling the Mam- 
moth Cave a new continent — as we have a South and 
North America, this might be called Lower America. 
And it is interesting to reflect that all the planets may 
not only be superficially inhabited, but also perforated 
throughout, and swarming with an internal population, 
like ant-hills. 

The halls and rooms discovered, are many of them far 
more wonderful than any hitherto known. In some pla- 
ces, the calcareous matter assumes the forms of inverted 
forests, ships, camel-leopards, ostriches and Bunker-Hill 
monuments. The sulphates of lime and magnesia are 
crystalized into even more curious forms than those in the 
cavern called Cleaveland's Cabinet — sometimes taking 
the shape of cut-glass ware, pyramids of cake, pumpkins, 
and frozen fountain-jets. There is one gigantic temple at 
least six. hundred feet in height ; and, in the lowest cav- 
ern visited, is a cataract twice the size of Niagara — doubt- 
less formed by the confluence of all the rivers in the up- 
per caves. In the same region also are quartz rocks, like 
those in the Indian avenue, and containing masses of pure 



166 NEW WONDERS OF THE MAMMOTH CATE. 

gold as large as cotton-bales. From tliis metal, the na- 
tives, with fragments of flint and jasper, have carved out 
grotesque ornaments for their abodes, none of them, how- 
ever, wearing any ornaments on their fragile and suffi- 
ciently beautiful persons. 

We have not yet visited the locality where they obtain 
flint, chalk and red and yellow ochres. The flint and 
jasper may have been obtained from a sand-stone dyke 
like that near the Park Room ; and red ochre has already 
been found by previous visitors of the cave. With the 
above colors — white, red, and yellow — the Anthropoptera 
have richly adorned the walls of several rooms, in patterns 
somewhat resembling the flowered Saracen style. This 
is especially the case with the splendid suit of halls where 
King Nono holds his court. Here, also, we discovered 
that the sinews of the dead had been, ages ago, stretched 
in lattice-work across the cavern, at intervals, and had be- 
come gorgeously encrusted with crystals, after the manner 
of alum-baskets ; no more beautiful screens can be con- 
ceived. The same means had been employed to form the 
throne and its canopy, and the basket-coffins in the Dead 
Room, or Westminster Abbey. The sinnews and skins 
of those deemed unworthy of burial, had likewise been 
formed into instruments resembling the guitar, to the mu- 
sic of which the courtiers danced, sometimes in an inver- 
ted position on the domes, or horizontally from the 
walls, or forming various figures in mid-air. With frag- 
ments of flint, many of the walls and stalagmites were 
carved^ and in these the progress of their Fine Arts 



NEW WONDERS OF THB MAMMOTH CAVE. 167 

for three thousand years could be traced from the rudest 
images to perfect ideals of their present form, in very life- 
like and historical or allegorical attitudes — some of them, 
indeed, were ideals of our own human figure, two of the 
eleven original mummies (probably a king and queen) 
having been evidently stuffed with the nitre-dust and 
Epsom saltz abounding here, thus retaining theii* exqui- 
site proportions, and transmitting to their descendents mod- 
els of the original beauty of the race. Numerous stalac- 
tites, carved in this, and also in the dragon-form, are con- 
nected by the original column to the roof and floor, thus 
presenting the caryatides- style of architecture. 

The wonders must be thus hastily dismissed. King 
Nono reigns absolute monarch in the northern branch of 
the new caverns. In the southern branch (where we en- 
tered) a multitude of the Anthropoptera constitute a re- 
public, electing their officers annually by the acclamation 
of their wings. The year, by the way, is correctly meas- 
ured by the great rise of the subterranean rivers, undoubt- 
edly caused by the rainy season on the earth above. The 
highest water-mark is the day of election, and the lowest 
the period of New Year's festivity. In the republic, they 
are making commendable progress in the arts of design, 
and also in literature, their books being portions of the 
walls, sold out to authors by their government, and let- 
tered and illustrated with chalk and ochres. Here, also, 
is the spot where their ancestors were first shut in by the 
earthquake ; and many of the creatures had been cutting 



168 NEW "WONDEES OF THE MAMMOTH GATE. 

away at the rock, ia hope of effectiag an escape from 
cavedom ; some indeed (whose name, literally translated, 
is ultra-go-aheaders) had dashed themselves dead in their 
impatience to remove the rock. 

After all, the most important disclosures are found in 
the ancient inscriptions, as deciphered by our scaly friend 
Oo. One series of hieroglyphics runs thus ; — six figures 
in the act of running towards the left ; then (to the right 
and below) an extremely elongated human neck with the 
shoulders and breast (on which are the running men and 
women) and the head, around which are the moon and 
stars, and on its forehead several pyramidal projections. 
"With the aid of Oo, we have decided that the breast of 
the large figure represents America ; the figures in mo- 
tion, six emigrants, perhaps escaping from pursuers ; the 
long neck, the supposed former isthmus that connected 
the West Indies (or South America) with Africa ; the 
head, surrounded with stars, the dark or night-like color 
of the Ethiopean ; and the short horns being emblems of 
the pyramids of Egypt, from the vicinity of which the first 
inhabitants of this continent — perhaps these very mum- 
mies — may have emigrated, the neck of land between the 
hemispheres having afterwards disappeared. This theory 
may now be considered a settled truth. 

In conclusion, the world is especially indebted to our 
winged friend Oo for his assistance in interpreting many 
valuable inscriptions. He is the ChampoUion of the age ; 
and, like all his dragon race^ is also a Sham-Apollyon. 



AN UNDEKGROUND RAILROAD. 



We are accustomed to expend our veneralion upon hu- 
man parentage and wooden cradles. We are loth to ac- 
knowledge our mother Earth — to confess that we were 
first cradled in a clam-shell. But our spirit's infancy 
reaches back to the lowest form of life. The oak lies not 
only in the acorn, but in the acorn's previous bud. The 
human mind, lies at first, in the sea-shell ; nay, in the 
crystal. Here is the first pearly drop of created intellect 
as it falls from heaven ; we are the after river. At first, 
we exist in the plant, sponge, and other species of Zoo- 
phytes ; indeed, in this human life, there are often some 
traces of a sponging disposition left. In the shell, crys- 
tal, and plant, there is not yet the power of locomotion ; 
nature kindly holds us on her lap. Then we arrive at 
quadrupedal motion ; in this life, it is long before we for- 
get it, and learn to stand erect. 



170 AN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. 

Here we have a true pupilage of spirit ; chrysalis withia 
chrysalis, noviciate withia noviciate. Nor does this in- 
volve the atheism of the French naturalist, who dispensed 
with a First Cause, by insisting that organization can be- 
gin in a natural, chemical fermentation ; and, from a 
mere animalcule; work itself up to the physical perfection of 
the human system. Each material embodiment must de- 
cay ; it cannot change itself, by accident or design, into a 
higher, more perfect one. Each form of incarnation re- 
quired a distinct, original creation, and is reproduced 
unalterable ; but our spirits glide obliviously from one to 
the other. It is the same winged seraph upon every step 
of the heaven-reaching ladder. 

That our previous existence has left no traces in the 
memory, is no refutation. The analogy of temporary in- 
sanity and somnambulism, proves this simple proposition, 
— that we can have an active, and, to some extent, intel- 
ligent life withia, and thus much more such a life anterior, 
to this : further, it proves that it can be accornpanied 
with a suspension of certain faculties of mind. 

It is wise that a veil of oblivion is thrown over our an- 
te-human states. Otherwise we would be encumbered 
with a throng of useless recollections ; we would be for- 
ever looking back, instead of upward and onward ; we 
would relax our clasp upon that banner placed in every 
hand, and inscribed " Excelsior." To be less poetic and 
more practical, there would otherwise be a proneness to 
conform our present to our previous modes of life. If 
gigantic nests, like those of the fabled roc in Sinbad, 



AN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. 171 

were not substituted for brick and mortar, there would at 
least be some danger that this tendency would creep into 
the details of life. Possibly our housewives, in memory 
of their bird-life, might never be persuaded to furnish us 
with anything but ' bird-nest puddings.' 

It is easy to be pleasant upon this theme ; it is hardly 
possible not to be quite smart in treating of it lightly. 
Transmigration is generally regarded as a capital jest, or 
as a fine, old, exploded fancy ; though rather more beau- 
tiful in brilliant explosion, than in dull, unquestioned re- 
ality. Let us remember, however, that it was once a be- 
lief ; and that there is something at the base of every hu- 
man belief, suggesting, if not substantiating it. There is 
yet no Bible of Science, attested by miracles and martyrs, 
like the Bible of religion ; therefore It is a profound re- 
mark, when applied to science, not religion, that the " el- 
ements already exist in many minds around you, of a doe- 
trine of life which shall transcend any written record we 
have. The new statement will comprise the scepticisms 
as well as the faiths of society, and out of unbeliefs a 
creed shall be formed." 

Butler's argument for a future life rests on analogy, 
and it arrives at moral certainty. That argument, he him- 
self admits, will equally apply to all animals ; but dispo- 
ses of the subject by saying, — first, that we know not 
with what latent powers animals may be endued ; second, 
that their immortality does not necessarily imply any ca- 
pacities of a rational and moral nature. The first suppo- 
sition is directly in favor of a theory of Metempsychosis 



172 AN UNDEKGROUND RAILROAD. 

whicli affirms that every animal ig "but the novice and 
probationer of a more advanced order;" and that man 
himself is truly the last of an ascending series, through 
■which he has passed. Mind may exist with some of its pow- 
ers in action, and others dormant. There is, at first, no 
evidence of moral, rational capacities in the infant ; why 
then should we deny them to be latent in all animals, ex- 
hibiting, as they do, many characteristics of mind? If 
they manifest some of its attributes, the burden of proof, 
not mere assertion, lies with you, that they have not every 
other. But ignorance debars your proof. We are not 
initiated into the mysteries of these Independent Orders 
of Odd Animals below us. As Coleridge says of the Pla- 
tonists, so we may say of brutes — '"' if we cannot understand 
their ignorance, we should conclude ourselves ignorant of 
their understanding." Who can gaze long into the quiet, 
thoughtful eyes of many of them, without a stout hint that 
there is more than we give them credit for ; without feel- 
ing reproached for yielding idle consent to that calumni- 
ous philosophy, which would make them mere machines, 
to be annihilated, soul and body at death — the soul of 
them, at least. 

The last supposition of Butler, that their immortality 
does not imply any rational capacities, is abhorrent to all 
conception of the designs of a moral governor of the Uni- 
verse — to all ideas of the heaven of the Bible. It would 
give us the Elysium of the Indian, who, in his simplicity, 
peoples his Paradise with the ghostly game, which he is to 
hunt forever, in peace and profusion. Is it not more con- 



AN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. 173 

sistent to suppose, that the great amount of inferior life, 
animal and vegetable, sustains a necessary, spiritual rela- 
tion to us, and thus to the moral ends of the Creator ? 
"We can prove by analogy that, where life is, there is 
somewhat immortal ; we deny that an irrational immortal- 
ty is supposable ; we assume that there is no transition 
from an irrational life to a rational eternity — that the 
conditions of our own probation, by analogy, disprove 
it. What are we to do ? Is not the theory of Metem- 
psychosis, just mentioned, our only alternative? Let 
us look further. .Excuse a little prosiness ; there is 
not much of this corduroy road to go over, and you will 
get upon a railway very soon. 

There is a growth of mind, as well as of body ; from 
infancy to manhood these keep pace together. How little 
of the god-like man do we discover in the animal glee, 
the pitiable weakness, the dawning intelligence of the in- 
fant ! Yet the child's intellect becomes the man's. The 
river of an inner life is there ; by gradual accessions it at- 
tains an Amazon strength and volume. Must we believe 
that, at our birth, it swells up from nothing into existence 
— an intellectual existence which is so soon river-like in 
contrast with that of the animal ; but presenting a dispar- 
ity no greater than that of those large streams, which dis- 
appear for a long way beneath the Earth's surface, only to 
burst forth with accumulated force and plenitude. May 
not 

"Our birth (be) but a sleep and a forgetting?'' 



174 AN UNDERGROUND RAII-ROAD. J 

Allowing a little time for the infant's mind to get thor- 
oughly waked up, it is only on a par with that of the 
most intelligent brute. Have we not here struck upon 
the same stream ? The most sagacious animal, in its in- 
fancy, is on a level with the nest inferior species. Is not 
this same rill the after stream, the still later river ? And 
60 we might follow up the series, proceeding from greater 
to less degrees of perfection, until we come to unorganized 
matter — the boundary beyond which there is no sign of 
life. The simile will hold from man to the Cedar of 
Lebanon, and from that to the hyssop that springeth out 
of the wall. After looking at principles aside from forms, 
we may see that there is no impassable gulf between the 
natural kingdoms — that it is no great leap from man to the 
crystal. 

The crystallizing energy proceeds upon the most precise 
mathematical principles ; even as the honey-bee constructs 
its cells, with the utmost economy of strength, materials 
and capacity. Yet some would explain this latter phenom- 
enon, by classing it with the merely mechanical process of 
the unscientific practitioner, who finds the contents of a 
cask with a guage, or ascertains his longitude with a quad- 
rant. This will do, when they have discovered a Treat- 
ise on Geometry, or at least a few miniature instruments, 
actually in the possession of the bee, and of Nature's 
thousand, invisible, little crystal-makers. Until they de- 
tect these, we must believe that all of these little agents 
carry their theories and rules in their own heads. Go with 
your search-warrant to the spider and bee, and at least 



AN DNDERaROUND RAILROAD. 175 

show us a goniometer, or a pair of compasses, concealed 
upon their persons ; then will we hold them innocent of 
any cognition of intuitive truths ; then will we unhesita- 
tingly believe that the musquitoes at the West, as we are 
assured in the broad style of Occidental hyperbole, liter- 
ally carry grindsipnes beneath their wings, wherewith to 
sharpen their remorseless beaks. 

There is the same evidence of intelligence in the crys- 
tallizing agency, as in the insect, or, outwardly, in the man. 
The doctrine, advocated by Addison, that immediate Di- 
vine efficiency is the secret of instinct, vegetable life, crys- 
tallization, and all of the ongoings of nature, no one, 
probably, will now maintain. Deity works through medi- 
ate agencies, by Him gifted with conditional self-activity. 
Show, then, that there is not as truly an intelligent agent 
beneath the insect and crystal, as there was back of the 
hand which wrote the Prineipia. Euclid and Newton were 
not inane chemical laws ; if we had no evidence of their 
personal existence, we would never consider their works, 
upon accidentally discovering them, to be an effect of 
blind laws, or direct creations of Omnipotence. It can 
be assumed, too, that the crystal has life — aside from the 
fact that it follows necessarily from intelligence — ^until 
some positive evidence is adduced to the contrary. It is 
not disproved by the fact that vapor and fluids, under cer- 
tain conditions, always pass into crystallization. Life, 
soul — distinct and individual, yet incomputable and every- 
where present — constantly awaits its appropriate conditions, 
to seize upon and organize lifeless matter. The semi- 



176 AN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. 

transparent fluid in the slioll of tlie clirysalis, is intrinsi- 
cally mere inert matter ; yet it invariably passes into the 
butterfly, for a life principle is busily at work upon it. 
Nor must the life of the crystal, to constitute life, be pro- 
longed beyond the act of outward completion. It is petri- 
fied in the act of growth ; its corpse is its own sarcopha- 
gus, its own pyramid. Indeed, one is inclined to think, 
at times, that the Pyramids of Egypt are nothing but enor- 
mous crystals, formed and left there by the soul of a 
Washington or a Bonaparte^ when it first came into being, 
and centuries before it assumed the human form. People 
may have mistaken for masonry, the cleavage in laminae, 
parallel and perpendicular to the base, of the interfaeial 
solid angles, which cleavage, by a law of crystallization, is 
a property of the octahedral prism ; and by which, after 
sufficient removal of the laminae, it would become a cube ; 
— a natural mistake, when we reflect that the minutest 
crystal, under a microscope of adequate power, would 
present the appearance of steps upon its surfaces ; and that, 
in the case of the pyramids, but half of the octahedron is 
visible ; — otherwise a strange mistake ; as if the account 
of Heroditus, that the erection of one of them employed a 
hundred thousand men for twenty years, is not manifestly 
a bear story ; as if the ancients possessed a mechanical 
force sufficient to raise those immense blocks of stone, 
which we cannot so much as move ; as if, granting its 
possession, it were not only an impo?sibility, but a libel 
on humanity, that such an amount of labor could have 
been directed in such a channel, for so long a time ; as if 



AN UNDBRGRODND RAILROAD. 177 

supposing this possible, a simple, geometrical form of 
structure would ever have been preferred to the grand and 
grotesque architecture of Old Egypt. 

Take breath, reader ! You hardly expected to be 
marched directly over the top of a Pyramid. But we 
shall soon take the cars, and have an easy jaunt of it the 
rest of the way. In contending that the apparent life- 
lessness of the crystal is no evidence against a living, in- 
telligent agency in its formation — that it is petrified in the 
act of growth — the remark was forgotten, that the law of 
gradual induration, which alone would set a bound to our 
lives, by changing the muscular plasticity of youth to fixed 
rigidity in old age, maybe almost instantaneous in its ope- 
ration on the crystal. However this may be, and for the 
present dropping the subject of insects and jewels — winged 
and wingless gems, between which there is not much differ- 
ence after all — let any one prove it a false analogy, which 
reasons from our present, to a previous growth of "mind, in 
some other state of existence, as a highly probable, if not 
a necessary, conclusion. 

Again, the old argument concerning the identity of the. 
soul through all the constant flux of the material body, 
will apply here. If we really inhabit successive bodies in 
this life, it is quite reasonable that we have passed through 
an anterior series. Certainly, there is a greater dissimil- 
arity between an infant specimen of the class Mammalia, 
genus Homo Sapiens, and a full-grown specimen of the 
same, than between the latter and an individual of the 
same class, genus Pithecus Satyrus, in its maturity. If 



178 AN UNDEKGKOUND RAILROAD. 

Adam had ignorantly stumblod upon the infant Cain, in 
one of his scientific excursions, we doubt not he would 
have jjut the small phenomenon low down in his classifica- 
tion of the animal kingdom. 

Once more, (we are almost in sight of our subterranean 
depot,) organized matter, it is well known, passes, by the 
process of consumption, from a less degree of perfection to 
a higher. The microscopic, transparent animalcules, every- 
where pervading the ocean, subsist upon vegetable parti- 
cles, washed by rivers into that vast reservoir, and there 
held in solution. These animalcules are the food of vari- 
ous polypi ; these again are devoured by superior species, 
until we come to minute fish. From thence, there is an up- 
ward transmutation to those species which furnish almost 
exclusive sustenance to the fisherman, and pass into his 
bodily composition. Thus the fisherman has an unbroken 
line of aquatic ancestry, so to speak, on his material side. 
Is it not a reasonable conclusion, that he has a co-exten- 
sive, co-existent, and ascending line on his spiritual 
side ? 

80 with us landsmen. The lichens are the ' first pio- 
neers, who make an inroad upon utter barrenness.' Then 
come mosses, which thrive upon the decay of lichens. 
The soil, furnished by the mosses, gives root to herbage 
and grains ; and these in turn are the food of animals. 
This same matter is often changed into a long, upward 
series of carnivorous animals, until it re-appears, refined 
and organized into our own delicate, physical structure. 
Now, are we to suppose that a new, distinct, vital princi- 



AN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. 179 

pie was created at every step in tliis ascending transmuta- 
tion of matter, merely to carry it along from link to link, 
and then at every step destroyed ! Was a new, different- 
ly contrived steam-engine constructed at every station, 
to transport this matter up the gentle inclination to the 
next, there to be demolished and give place to another ? 
Or, did not this same locomotive mind of ours take materi- 
al freight through the whole ti-ack,.from the animalcule 
and lichen to the man ? Here is our Grand Underground 
Railway ; running, not beneath the earth we tread upon, 
but beneath the earth with which we, and the whole world 
of life, are clothed. Under another view, it may be con- 
sidered as iu part subterranean, and in part superterranean. 
The starting point, the Ticket-Office, is beneath the angu- 
lar roof of the crystal — in a certain variety of quartz, they 
have not yet learned to burn their smoke, which accounts 
for its peculiar discoloration ; — from this it is a short way 
out into the sunshine of our insect-life ; at first, moving 
slow enough in the caterpillar ; then, disappearing a mo- 
ment in the cha-ysalis, as through a deep excavation, we 
reappear and buzz along, with a flashing lustre, through 
flowery fields and waving woods, until, at our insect death, 
we plunge into a tunnel's dark mouth, and are lost to 
view. Amidst the gloom and stunning roar about us, we 
swoon into forgetfulness of the Past ; then, emerging into 
light, we awake to the new and busier life of higher orders 
of animals. It is a long, mountainous way, and we are 
often in darkness and often in light, before the Elysian 
Fields of this human life open upon us. 



180 AN UNDERGKOUND RAILROAD. 

Now onward — onward we wliirl ; tlie anniversary mile- 
posts of life quickly come and go ; another yawning cav- 
gi-n — another grave is before us. When that one is pass- 
ed, we trust to fly along a forever sun-lit track, like to 
that " great rail-road of the heavens, staked out from con- 
stellation to constellation, on which the comet comes blaz- 
ing upward from the depths of the universe." 

It is not very strange that we do not recognize kindred 
mind in the lowest forms of life. There, we see the little, 
creeping, puffing train in the far distance j and thus can- 
not distinguish all the wheels and valves and pistons — in 
other words, these boasted mental attributes of ours. We 
stand upon a Dover cliff, and 

" The crows and choughs that wing the mid-way air, 
Seem scarce so gross as beetles." 

It is not to be understood by all this, that we absorb 
the spirit, acquire the disposition of the animal we devour, 
as certain herbivorous ladies and gentlemen of our day 
suppose. Such a doctrine would lead us to expect, that 
the grave-robbing hyena would, in time, become quite 
humanized. It is not to be required of analogies that 
they hold in detail. Only prove this to be a false analo- 
gy, which simply reasons from the ascending perfectibility 
of organized matter, to a corresponding and co-estensive 
ascent of that mind^ which confessedly co-exists with mat- 
ter in its highest perfection. 

We are forever looking at the form, the outward ; not 
at the inner, the principle. Eespiration is respiration, 
whether by meaus of lungs, as in us, or by pores, as in 



AN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. 181 

plants and some of tlie lowest orders of animal life. So, 
mind, tlie one principle back of all respiration, circulation, 
nutrition, is mind, whatever the degree of development ; ifc 
is life, and the only life. If the mere animal has not in- 
tellect, and yet has life, this life must be a tertium quid. 
But the highest generalization of existence is into mind, or 
intellect, and matter ; and matter is inert ; therefore life is 
a property of intellect. To get a theory of life, in its true, 
primary essence, we must leave forms and abstract chemi- 
cal laws — mere correspondencies of certain dependent 
changes, not real agents ; we must go back to the primary, 
moving cause, subject of course to the Great First Cause. 
Now what is this inmost mainspring of life but my soul 
itself? Is there another, created, independent agent to 
keep iu motion the involuntary action of the system ? 
May not every inflation of the lungs and pulsation of the 
heart, though regularly excited by constant exigencies 
within, be the same in kind with an involuntary closing of 
the eye, or interposition of the arm, when the eye or person 
is suddenly endangered, by an occasional exigency with- 
out ? The fact of increased palpitation, in consequence of 
sudden emotion, would rather suggest that the acceleration 
and the usual pulsation originate in the same manner. 

I like not this putting the reins into the hands of an vin- 
known something within me, though there were just as 
much safety to this carneous vehicle. I (my mind) am 
not to be put like a band-box on the top. Sir Phrenologist, 
while your physical laws assume the driver's seat ; or, per- 
haps, being many, the rogues are mounted upon the hors- 



182 AN UNDERQROUxVD RAILROAD. 

es. Most triumphant simile ! The physical laws are 
rather the inanimate reins. I may be a very philosophi- 
cal or meditative coachman, so that my thoughts are al- 
ways upon something else ; but I will drive a four-in-hand 
(respiration, perspiration, circulation, digestion,) just as 
well for all that. Aye, — since the action of the system 
continues in sleep — I may be sleeping soundly, but I shall 
instinctively keep the road, until upset by a cold or an 
ague ; and then these same reins will only facilitate the 
catastrophe. 

Cuvier's theory of vortices was very good. Life — that 
is, mind, according to the foregoing — is a little, eddying 
whirlwind which draws up from the earth these columns of 
dust, which we call body, plant, tree ; these spheres of 
dust, which we name crystal, porcupine, elephant — an 
odd collocation, for it is hard to forget forms, and come 
back to essentials. We cannot watch invisible, nude 
spirit, between its disrobing and the re-investment of it 
with the body. Nature does not let us into the mysteries 
of her boudoir, and therefore we do not identify ourselves 
with those forms of life, which are only the morning disha- 
bille of our spirits. But who shall say that it is not the 
same, identical efficiency or mind, which, in its true, farthest 
infancy, seizes the vapor of your very breath, and shoots it 
out, particle by particle, into beautiful frost-work upon the 
window-pane ; or, in the deep recesses of the earth, gathers 
and condenses carbon into the diamond. Again, in ma- 
turer vigor, it flies to the earth's surface, attracts its gase- 
ous and mineral elements, and pushes them up into the 



AN UNDEFvGROrND RAILROAD. 183 

light of day, all organized into a blooming plant, or iron- 
hearted oak. Still again, in later and wiser energy, it suc- 
cessively cleaves the air — an insect, then an eagle; or 
glides over the ground, a serpent, and then an antelope. 
Finally, having cast off the last of this long series of ehrys- 
ales, having arrived at the last, earthly grade in this school- 
ing of spirits, it fastens on purer matter and lovelier forms, 
and looks forth from the human face divine. 

It was a crystallizing power all along. First, it tried its 
hand at common quartz, frost and snow ; then at a star- 
fish or pearl ; now it can crystallize flesh and blood into 
living carnelian — can give us an awkward, rhomboid spar 
of a man, or a perfect, flashing gem of a woman. It can 
now go on, after giving itself body, and crystallize immate- 
rial images and truths into poems, romances, codes of gov- 
ernment, sermons, speeches. It can collect and arrange 
rules of conduct, and systems of Theology, from the intui- 
tions of its maturer reason and the teachings of Revelation ; 
and thus attain that stage of its being when moral accoun- 
tability to its Maker begins. 

There is another metempsychosis yet. We have not 
been introduced to the highest circles of the universe. We 
are not tnie Doctors of Divinity or Laws ; we are not an- 
gels worth writing verses at yet. This mortal coil must be 
dropped. Spirit must wrap itself in its coronation robe — 
a final, organic perfection, when every sense will be infi- 
nitely quickened, and perhaps many new ones added. 
Now our wishes, as the proverb saith, are not even horses ; 
then our wishes will be wings. Says Richter, in his 



184 AN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. 

Dream of the Universe, " my body (as I dreamed) sank 
away from me, and my inward figure came shining forth ; 
by my side stood a similar figure, which flashed without 
ceasing. ' Two thoughts are my wings,' said the figure, 
' the thought Here, and the thought Yonder. Think and 
fly with me, that I may show you the universe. Sometimes 
the flashing figure outflow my wearied thoughts, and 
shone far from me, like a spark beside a star, until I again 
thought Yonder, and was with it." 

This is the last metempsychosis. Here the old theo- 
ries of Transmigration were at fault. Their authors had 
no revelation to discover this ; therefore they believed 
that we might pass out of this into lower scales of life. 
But has Revelation excluded the idea that we may have 
transmigrated from other forms, from previous states ? It 
speaks of the ' beasts that perish ;' but nothing is predi- 
cated of the animal, in those passages, that is not of man, 
tinder certain conditions ; besides, this and similar phrases 
may be accommodations to popular belief, like those re- 
ferring to astronomical appearances. It speaks of * the 
spirit of the beast that goeth downward, and the spirit of 
man that goeth upward ;' but, mind you, it is a change of 
place, not annihilation ; its spirit goeth downward, to be 
clothed anew in other clay ; while that of man goeth up- 
ward, having finished its long series of earthly metamor- 
phoses. Eevelation has given us hints in point. What 
mean the assurances we have that the evil propensities of the 
brute creation were only awakened at Adam's Fall, and 
will cease when the Millenium begins — that then the lion 



AN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. 185 

and lamb will lie down together ? Why was it said of the 
ground, ' thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee ?' 
How should human sin have infected a wholly independent 
order of beings around us ? Verily, the germ of an assas-' 
sin is in the thistle ; a Lady Macbeth in the rose. We 
are the river, and the lowest form of life the rill. The 
poisonous fountain broke forth in the river's bed, but the 
deadly tide sot back to the river's source. Your polemi- 
cal philosophers must now go back to the oyster, and fight 
their battles there. Then they will come home with some 
-apology for muddy metaphysics. 

Speaking of Adam, in his case and that of all animals 
when first created, there is no need to suppose a transmigra- 
tion, a preparatory schooling of soul ; that, as well as their 
bodies, was created mature. Still, as no evidence of a 
race, corresponding to man, is found in the Ante-Mosaic 
systems of life, discovered by geologists in a fossil state, 
I am in doubt whether the spirits of those wonderful mon- 
sters did not somehow Rurvive chaos, and enter into the 
present system. There was a spice of the Mastodon and 
Icthiosaurus in the old-time heroes. 

Languages and literature have given us hints in point. 
What means the old, innate tendency to the uS]sopic style 
of fable — a style peculiarly fascinating to the child's mind, 
which, from the recency of its transmigration, is undoubt- 
edly possessed of a sort of consciousness that these fables 
are grounded in truth. Then too, there is the universal 
disposition to select proper names, as well as metaphorie 
designations, from animals, and apply them to men, in 



186 AN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. 

view of some real comeidenco of character. Above all, 
Nature has given us a thousand hints. What theory of 
indefinable instinct shall explain the occasional, extraordi- 
nary exhibitions of reason in brutes ? What chemical 
laws will account for the phenomena of the sensitive plant, 
the vshutting of flowers at precise hours, the fact that many 
turn their leaves and petals to the sun from his rising to 
his setting, and that some vines always climb from right 
to left, and others in the opposite direction — the former 
class reminding us of the left-handed tribe of Benjamin, or 
rather the tribe of Van Bunschotens, who, Diedrich 
Knickerbocker assures us, always kicked with the left 
foot. It is insane to deny that there is some sort of intel- 
ligence in all these instances. What mean those singular 
combinations of animal, vegetable, and mineral character- 
istics, termed Zoophytes ; unless it be to confound your 
delusive classifications, and show that, under the Creator, 
the same primary agent is in all organization ? The fact 
that the hair and finger-nails are truly vegetables, points 
to the same conclusion. The rose petal, my lady, may 
claim cousinship to your ' rosy, tapering nails ;' the ten- 
drils of the vine to your sunny ringlets. To be less com- 
plimentary, there is something more than ludicrous simile 
in that line of Holmes', 

"Her hair fell round her pallid cheek, like ssa-weed on a clam." 

Take organized life in whatever form, and then prove that 
one agent is not beneath it all, ever one and the same in 
kind, if not degree — ever the same, call it crystallization, 
vitality, instinct, or mind. 



AN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. 187 

In conclusion, for what end is the seeming excess of 
life — flying, swimming, walking, creeping, blooming, 
crystallizing life, all over tbe world, in wildernesses un- 
trodden by man, in unexplored caves, in unsounded seas. 
Natural Theology asks for but one instance of design ; 
physio-chemistry demands only a balance of the animal 
and vegetable kingdoms, be the extent of both great or 
small ; our necessities, sensual or poetical, seek only a 
sufficiency for sustenance, or material for poetical imagery. 
For what end is the apparent profusion, unless it be that the 
whole world is a vast, musical, military, gymnastic, poly- 
technic school for the education of the soul, from the 
prism and fern to the man. How beautifully does this 
solve the problem respecting natural diversities of genius, 
by suggesting, for instance, that the mathematician was 
longer in the honey-bee and crystal departments than oth- 
er men — that Euclid and La Place graduated directly from 
them into men, and thus had no time to forget their math- 
ematics, like the rest of us, who, possibly, may have taken 
a long vacation on the prairies as elk or bison. So of the 
diversities of disposition ; these may result from the end- 
lessly varied series of transmigrations of different minds, 
the characteristic disposition of each animal leaving its 
trace in the final compound. The last of the series at any 
point, may somewhat efface the traces of the preceding, 
and itself furnish the most prominent trait in the next 
form ; so that, by setting down our characteristics in the 
order of their prominence, we may trace back the ante-hu- 
man history of our souls to their very starting point. 



188 AN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. 

It is all a scene of trial, proof, in this antecliamber of 
eternity. Wherever there is Will, there is some sort of 
responsibility and reward. The dignity of floating in the 
"sunlight as an insect, right I'oyally clad in velvet and gold, 
is not attained without a candidateship. Gradual ascent 
is a law of intelligence. There is no legitimate dynasty in 
Nature. Man does not wear the crown of the animal 
kingdom, without having seen some rough, subaltern ser- 
vice. He is not the Emperor, the Napoleon of Nature, 
until he has been successively the cadet, the corporal, the 
general, the consul. Our several deaths as insects, plants, 
animals, were the Lodi, the Jena, the Austerlitz of our 
career. The Waterloo is yet before us ; from tliat scene 
we shall rise to a nobler empire, or sink to eternal exile. 

The error of Emerson is, that he has linked spirit for- 
ever into nature. He does not acknowledge the last 
metempsychosis into a permanent, glorious, perfect state.* 
With strange inconsistency, he makes spirit to grope down- 
ward into unconsciousness, after toilfully groping upward 
— up and down in an endless circle ; as if there could be 
a retrograde, after so long a series of ascending intelli- 
ligence ; as if, having reached the pinnacle of Nature's 
temple, we must not forthwith leap out of Nature, and 
float ever upward on new-born wings, until we melt 
to sight in the loftier temple-dome of the boundless heav- 
ens above. 

And now, reader, say you, this theory, if not heretical, 
must always remain an idle speculation — it is not suscep- 

* See Essays, second series, p. 21 2. 



AN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. 189 

tible of proof ? True, not the proof of the senses. Bat 
moral certainty can be reached without that. 

Say you, there is too great, seeming, excess of ani- 
mal and vegetable life to admit of the supposition, tha t it 
all passes into the human form eventually, if we consider 
the comparatively limited extent of our race? Perhaps 
not ; but if you insist upon it, the objection can be avoid- 
ed by reminding you that it takes a great many drops to 
form a river ; that there may be a division of labor in 
mind-formation ; as, in manufactures, the pin is pointed in 
one department, headed in another, and polished in still 
another. It was not a cat, a dog, or a hare, that was 
gamboling about twenty or thirty years ago, but it was 
simply your pugnacity, your timidity, with a little sprink- 
ling of other qualities to give them pe]:sonality ; and thus, 
.in separate embodiments, these attributes were working 
themselves up to perfection, until, freed from their earthy 
alloy, they could slide with mercurial ease into one men- 
tal globule. We have had many transmigrations ; each 
state on the above supposition, was compounded of many 
forms of life ; one Dr. Wigan has discovered that we 
have two co-existing minds ; so that you must (taking 
the phrenological number of organs) get the thirty-ninth 
power of your whole number of transmigrations, and then 
multiply the result by two. This will account very sat- 
isfactorily for the great excess of all other races over the 
human. 

Say you, what utility would follow, if this theory was 
proved true ? Much every way. Its universal belief 



190 AN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. 

would doubtless prevent an amount of animal and veg- 
etable pain, incalculable — pain which claims our sympa- 
thy more than human misery, inasmuch as, in those forms 
of existence, the mind may have no glimpses of its better 
state to cheer it- Men would no longer be "considered 
famous according as they had lifted up axes upon the 
thick trees." Our groves and shade-trees and shrubs 
would be spared. The amateur entomologist would be 
convicted of veritable infanticide, whenever he dared to 
pin a beetle in his cabinet. Balaams and Jehus would be 
no more ; or if there were any, in the light of this theory, 
they would be terribly rebuked. Canary cages would be 
turned to sieves, and menageries to pedlar's carts. Children 
would no longer be suffered to amputate insects, and 
sportsmen would be gibbeted, without trial by jury. Se- 
riously, then will "man imprisoned, man vegetative, 
speak to man impersonated." Then will we recognize in 
the insect and flower, a younger brother and sister, even 
as now, in spirits and seraphs, our elder brethren. 

Why should it be humiliating ? Why should we shrink 
with contempt, and exclaim — " Was thy servant a dog?" 
With deeper emphasis, might a sainted spirit, looking 
earthward from the walls of heaven, exclaim — " Was thy 
servant a manV^ But no; a spirit cannot awake to 
this surprise, for death is not a sleep. 

•' Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 
The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And comethfrom afar." 



AN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. 191 

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy" 

—if that infancy be our earliest one in the crystal. Our 
home is in the sky, and we doubtless came from thence ; 
but wo cling to the rain-drop, in our first descent, and 
build a wondrous palace of it, even before we alight upon 
the ground. The clumsiest flake has elements of beauty, 
although, in general, these storm-gems come far short of 
perfection. They are, for the most part, such as the 
" common mind" might be expected to make in its first 
tumble to earth. It is seldom, for instance, that we have 
a shower of poets ; yet I remember a slight snow-fall — 
one still morning, five years since^so infinitely varied 
and splendid in its crystallizations, that, if I could be as- 
sured that one new-born genius did not accomplish it all, 
and that each, little, heaven-distilled intellect would com- 
plete its transmigratory ascent to humanity in just a cen- 
tury, I would confidently predict a plentiful crop of Mil- 
tons and Shakspeares, for the year nineteen hundred and 
forty-five. 



TRAVELS IN A DEW-DROP. 



As I reclined upon the dewy grass one clear, summer 
night, a seeming star shot down from the zenith, and, as it 
neared the earth, expanded into the bright form of an an- 
gel, bearing a long staff like a thread of lightning. The 
figure paused just over my head, and bending upon me 
its radiant eyes, whispered in tones seolian, " Wouldst 
thou know more of the mighty universe, and learn what 
part thou and thy little native star make of its infinity ? 
And wouldst thou learn the brevity and vanity of Life, 
and the swiftness of Time ?" Speechless with wonder and 
joy, and thinking that I should straightway have wings 
given me to fly through all immensity, (as in Richter's in- 
comparable " Dream of the Universe,") I waved my 
glad assent. Immediately the figure touched me with the 
tip of its shining rod ; no angelic strength flowed into my 
nerves, — no rainbow wings unfurled their ample breadth, 



TRAVELS IN A DEW-DROP. 193 

• 

but a sinking, melting sensation crept over me ; I shrank 
rapidly, until I was diminished to an atom — so small 
that, in grasping for support at a particle of dust floating by, 
I fell headlong through a large tunnel-like pore in its ve- 
ry centre. As the point of space into which I was com- 
pressed, was at first just where the centre of my former 
body had been, of course I was several inches from the 
ground ; down this dizzy height I contiaued to fall, until, 
just before I reached the earth, I became frightfully aware 
that I was about to be precipitated directly into a dew- 
drop ! I drew in my breath, determining manfully to 
abide the terrific plunge, and swim for my life, although, 
as I descended an inch nearer, the drop expanded into a 
wide, shoreless ocean, as it were a whole round world of 
water. Alas, thought I, this is the penalty of my pre- 
sumptuous curiosity. I endeavored to calm the wild tu- 
mult of my thoughts, that I might die with composure, 
when, as I approached yet nearer in my quick descent, 
the dew-drop seemed no longer a sea, but apparently sep- 
arated into a cloud of mist, — then its particles widened 
still farther, until they lay at seemingly immeasurable 
distances from each other, and glittered in the moonlight 
like little stars. I descended between them as into a wide, 
glorious universe of scattered suns ! I had a cold bath 
after all ; for, passing to the very centre of the stellar dew- 
drop, I alighted in a deep, limpid stream upon the surface 
of one of its atom-worlds ; it broke my fall, and perhaps 
saved my life. I crawled to the bank, and throwing my- 
self upou the soft turf, sought to recover my breath and 

9 



194 TRAVELS IN A DEW-DROP. 

composure. Suddenly my eye caught a gleaming particle 
at my feet — a dew-drop within a dew-drop ; how small it 
was you may barely guess, when you reflect that it bore 
the same proportion to the globules of dew you see upon 
the grass, that those globules do, not to this immense 
earth, but to the whole visible heavens- I trembled lest 
the angel should appear, and touching me — a poor atom — 
I should be a second time diminished into an atojn of an 
atom — a very monad of a monad ; and falling into a sec- 
ond drop, I might be lost to myself in complete annihila- 
tion, even as I was already lost to my friends and the ou- 
ter world. Shuddering at the thought, I looked up into 
the sky of dewy particles, and although I knew it was all 
contained within a mere drop, yet so complete was the 
illusion, and so perfect the harmony of proportion between 
myself and everything else, that I could hardly believe 
I was not of my old gigantic human size, and looking 
up into the same old heavens. And if I were, thought I, 
might I not be laboring under a similar illusion ; and may 
not the sons and daughters of Adam have just as exag- 
gerated notions of their own size and importance, and of 
the bulk of their earth, and of the sublime distances of 
their stars, as the inhabitants of this to them invisible 
atom-world ? 

I have neither time nor inclination to describe the 
scenes and adventures I passed through in my atomic trav- 
els, but will merely give a few general results of my ob- 
servations. It is sufficient to say that the little globe cor- 



TRAVELS IN A DEW-DROP. 196 

responded in many respects with that greater one, upon 
■which its whole surrounding firmament of microcosms 
rested, in the form of a sparkling dew-drop. That which 
struck me most forcibly at first, was the fact that the com- 
putation of time upon this terraqueous particle, and the 
length of life enjoyed by its inhabitants, corresponded per- 
fectly with the size of the atom. An hour with us was a 
thousand years with them, and consequently the eight 
hours'of a summer night, during which, only, the dew-drop 
(their universe) could exist, would just equal the 
tune of our world's existence, if we suppose the final 
conflagration to take place two thousand years hence. 
A year with them was equal to four seconds of our 
time, sixteen years to nearly ono minute, and the most 
protracted life, four score years, was completed in 
just five minutes. So inconceivably rapid, however, was 
the train of their thoughts and actions, and so crowded 
with events and enjoyments was their brief span of time, 
that their lives seemed quite as long to them as ours to 
us. They took a sound night's rest in the one hundred 
and eightieth part of a second, and I met wih certain la- 
dies and gentlemen of wealth and elegant leisure, who 
compkined bitterly of " dull times" and ennui, and who 
spent nearly all theu- lives in sleep, amusements, or at their 
toilets, the better to " kill time" and pass away long days 
which, by our computation, were only so many small 
fractions of a second. They reached their full stature and 
maturity in one minute from their birth, and were soon 
married, made or lost their fortunes, and in four minutes, 



196 TRAVELS IN A DEW-DKOP. 

at the farthest, after tliey had come of age, they sank into 
the grave with age and decrepitude. Their poets, indeed, 
were much given to discoursing upon the frailty and short- 
ness of life, but it was generally regarded as weak, inno- 
cent cant and common-place, for the memories of these ul- 
tra-microscopic beings could recall but little that happen- 
ed a half-minute before (eight of their years) and they 
looked forward, at every age, to a long, leisurely life be- 
fore them. Certainly, many of them occupied all of their 
five-minute lives in preparing for, and building splendid ed- 
ifices, and cultivating beautiful gardens and trees around 
them, as if they were to enjoy them more than one brief 
moment ; many also were hoarding little heaps of gold- 
dust, every particle of which was as much smaller than 
the atom-world itself, as a guinea is smaller than our mas- 
sive planet. 

So conformed was I, in mental and physical structure, 
to tliese little, rational, talking, laughing monads, and with 
such an unconscious velocity, corresponding to my size, 
did my thoughts, motions, waking and sleeping fractions 
of a second come and go, that at first I had great difii- 
culty in keeping the human measures of time, and could 
hardly realize that all these events were passing in a 
summer's night. In one thing I differed from them ; the 
angel had endowed me with an atomic immortality, so that 
I became a great subject of wonder to the generation which 
arose after the one I had first fallen upon. All the no- 
ted philosophers and doctors, by this time, began to flock 
around me, to know if I had adopted their several theo- 



TRAVELS IN A DEW-DROP. 197 

ries and modes of diet ; and I was equally claimed as a 
living confirmation of their systems of practice, by the ad- 
vocates of homoeopathy, allopathy, and the water-cure. 
But the third generation of theorizing atomites, which 
arose four minutes after the last had died away, took no 
philosophical notice of me ; I became an object of super- 
stitious terror, and figured largely in novels and romances 
as a sort of haggard Wandering Jeiv, who was doomed 
never to die. About this time, for another reason, I was 
imprisoned in a dungeon, where I lay the rest of the night, 
(their thousands of years) until morning broke and the 
drop exhaled. Before I come to this grand catastrophe, 
one word as to the state of science and politics with the 
inhabitants of this central particle of dew. 

At the time of my first arrival, the prevalent theory 
was similar to that of Ptolemy ; they supposed that, at a 
great distance from their terraqueous particle — perhaps the 
thousandth part of a hair's-breadth — it was surrounded by 
all the other visible particles of the drop, revolving with 
inconceivable rapidity around the central one, and making 
an inaudible but sublime " music of the spheres." Some 
twelve hundred years after, (an hour and twelve minutes 
with us) a new theory superseded, which made the drop 
stationary, the central particle revolving on its axis, and 
gave to the surrounding star-like atoms their true dis- 
tances. Four hundred of their years later, instruments were 
constructed which put to flight their long-cherished idea 
that their little spangled globule reached outward in all di- 
rections invisibly and indefinitely, so that the whole uni- 



198 TRAVELS IN A DEW-DROP. 

verse was nothing but that drop infinitely extended, and 
making one interminable ocean of dew 1 They found its 
shape and bounds, and, moreover, discovered thousands of 
other dew-drops scattered all around them, which, with 
their telescopes, appeared like crowded firmaments of 
suns. This was a sublime advance in their knowledge, to 
be sure ; but unluckily I ventured to assure them that there 
is a vast, substantial, enduring world, around which all 
those clouds of stars were scattered in thick profusion, 
like the dew upon their own atom-world ; that this invisible 
world would endure when their planet and skies of dew 
had been exhaled, exploded, and " no place found for 
them ;" that the unseen world is filled with mansions, 
towers, palaces, and inhabited by beings as much superi- 
or to theirs and to them, as they and their abodes were to 
any still more minute beings and habitations which they 
might imagine to be contained in a single drop from their 
flowing streams. 

All this was received, at first, as a very good moon- 
story or Gulliver's tale ; but when they found I was in 
earnest, they shut me up as a poor deluded lunatic ! In 
a little hollow atom of a dungeon, having one window gra- 
ted with bars irrefragible, yet invisible to a spider's eye, 
did I remain for the rest of the night, although to them 
and myself it seemed several thousand years. A king 
was on the throne when I was first confined, and my keep- 
ers were continued in office during life ; they succeeded 
each other in the freshness of youth, but, one after an- 
other, grew old and grey, and died. Towards morning a 



TRAVELS IN A DEW-DROP. 199 

republic arose ia place of the monarchy, and then there 
was a rotation in ofl&ee every year, — in other words all pub- 
lic officers were ejected every four seconds. 

But I hasten to the final and terrible catastrophe — the 
conflagration of the atom-world, which indeed was nothing 
more than the rising of our sun, and the evaporation of the 
dew ! The increasing light of the dawn, lit up the parti- 
cles with a lustre strange to the inhabitants of the atom, 
and unknown in all their history, for the drop which 
formed their vaulted heaven of stars had hitherto been 
only illumined by moonlight. As the light increased, their 
stars seemed growing in size, and shone with almost intol- 
erable splendor, and it was generally believed by them 
that the whole universe was rapidly approaching, as if on 
all sides it had conspired to crush their wicked little 
world. But their philosophers assured them that, at the 
most rapid rate, those stars would not reach them in hun- 
dreds of years. This soon quieted their fears, and they 
went dancing and laughing to their business and recrea- 
tions. But soon there was light enough for them to get 
glimpses of our earth and its scenery, which had thus far 
been dark and viewless, for the moonlight only revealed 
the dew-drops ; they grew terrified at the dim blades of 
grass which seemed like long streaming comets of a gi'een 
sulphurous brilliance, and they shouted in terror at sev- 
eral moving forms of men, who were early going afield, 
and whose heads towered far above their utmost sight. 
Suddenly the sun looked over the eastern hills ; they 
could not see its disc, but verily they could behold its 



200 TBAVELS IN A DEW-DROP. 

warm rays, "wliicli came darting into the dew-drop — tLat 
is, their heavens, like broad, vivid sheets of lightning, long 
as the universe, and so thick and incessant as almost to 
molt into one vault of blinding fire ! The outermost par- 
ticles of the drop, which just before appeared like mighty 
suns plunging iu wrath upon the atom-planet, now, as 
they evaporated, seemed to explode in crashing thunder 
and disappear forever. Nearer and nearer came the de- 
vastation ; one by one — nay, by hundreds, they were blot- 
ted out, and their explosions shook the inmost atom of a 
world, where I stood in mute horror. 

The dew-drop skies grew intensely hot to me and the 
inhabitants of the particle ; our delicate senses could not 
endure it, and the gentle warmth seemed to us like a fur- 
nace heated seven-fold. The bars of my dungeon hissed 
to the touch, and the walls cracked aloud; the keeper had 
opened it and fled, and I rushed out; horror-struck beings 
were running to and fro, and throwing away the gold to 
which they had frantically clung, for it blistered in their 
grasp ; the streams simmered and went up in vapor ; forests 
and cities took fire and burned to heaven ; two armies, who 
a moment before were at the crisis of battle, tore off their 
scorching armor, and fell into each other's arms ; some 
howled in agony, others fainted, and all around lay pallid 
corpses, whose distorted faces stood out ghastly in the quiv- 
ering lightning. Louder boomed the crash of worlds, and 
the atom-planet on which I stood seemed just ready to ex- 
plode, when — I awoke ! 

My dream was over ; the noise and large pattering drops 



TRAVELS IN A DEW-DROP. 201 

of a thunder-storm had awakened me, as I lay upon the 
grass. I sought shelter in my room, thinking that to supe- 
rior beings our lives may seem but a moment — Time but 
a summer's night ; that to the angel who shall stand upon 
the land and sea, and lift his awful form above the stars, 
our visible heavens may seem but a dew-drop, and its final 
conflagration but as an exhalation of the nightly distilled 
diamond. Then, too, the great invisible world shall stand 
out in its vast reality, like the earth to the affrighted atoms, 
under the rising Sun of Eternity. 



9* 



VON BLITZEN'S EXPERIMENT. 



It is higli time that justice be done to my friend Blit- 
zen. Certainly, it is time that the world be put in posses- 
sion of a discovery, which, next to Animal Magnetism, the 
Water Cure, and the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph, (with 
all of which it is intimately connected,) is the most won- 
derful development of the age. We need not hesitate to 
say, that it will speedily effect a revolution in society — in 
the whole economy of life — such as the world has never 
seen, or dreamed of seeing. 

It may gratify a reasonable curiosity, as well as prepare 
the reader to appreciate better the claims of both the dis- 
covery and the discoverer, if I first describe the man, and 
relate the circumstances under which I made his acquain- 
tance. It is also much preferable, that the scientific hints, 
facts, and premises, and the process of reasoning which 
led my friend to so marvelous results, be given in his own 



VON blitzen's experiment. 203 

words, as nearly as I can recollect them. Not to tanta- 
lize the curious, it may be remarked, however, at the out- 
set, that Von Blitzen — Blundervicu Von Blitzen — has 
realized what may have occurred to many as a most desir- 
able impos-ibility, namely : the instantaneous transporta- 
tion of one's self to any distance, by means of the Electro- 
Magnetic Telegraph ! This, perhaps, is the most brilliant 
feature of the discovery, although it is accompanied with 
results of even more practical moment — such as a perfect 
realization of the ultimatum of the old Gnostic philosophers 
and mystic sects — complete freedom from the chains and 
pains of matter ; the elevation of the laboring classes, and 
a general relief from the present faulty construction of 
society ; and also a triumphant vindication of all fuel- 
saving inventions and systems of scientific starvation — not 
by showing their individual utility, but by surpassing, and 
thus dispensing with them altogether — food and fuel be- 
ing, on my friend's system, no longer necessary in any 
shape. But to my story. 

In the course of a pedestrian journey, during the sum- 
mer of 1846, I had occasion to pass through an extensive 
tract of partially wooded and thinly inhabited land, for the 
purpose of saviug several miles of circuitous road. Near 
the middle of the day, I encountered a man, whose odd 
appearance and singular equipments at once arrested my 
attention. Seemingly quite advanced in life, his long, 
gray hair, in part discolored to a dingy yellow, hanging 
over his shoulders, he was short, thick-set, and clad in a 
towering fur cap, and a threadbare, faded, green surtout, 



204 TON blitzen's expeeiment. 

buttoned to the chin. His face, full and round, bore a 
peculiarly benignant expression, despite a gray, scrubby 
beard and moustaches, while his complexion, sallow and 
leathery, completed the foreign, antiquated, mouldy look 
of his whole figure. An ancient pair of spectacles, with 
enormous circular glasses, clung to his little bulbous nose, 
unassisted by the modern side-supports ; a short German 
pipe, with a crooked stem and capacious bowl, capped with 
a brass cover, depended from his pinched-up lips ; a pon- 
derous musket was in his hands, and an uncouth powder- 
flask hung upon one side, balanced on the other by a bat- 
tered tin box (used, as I afterwards learned, to preserve 
botanical specimens) ; these, with sundry other curious 
receptacles suspended about him, and a stiflF gauze net for 
entrapping insects, attached to a long staff, and looking 
like a countess-dowager's cap of state, completed his list 
of accoutrements. Enthusiastic little Blitzen ! Never 
shall I forget thy quaint, hearty look, although thou art 
now — not dead, indeed— but I am anticipating the 
Bequel. 

When I first beheld the solitary stranger, he was in the 
act of aiming his gun at the top of a dry pine (I think at 
a common black crow). I waited until he fired, and see- 
ing that he was disappointed in the effect of his shot, I ap- 
proached and addressed him. He replied to my salutation 
with great affability, and in broken English, mingled with 
BO many German words and idioms, as to leave no doubt 
respecting the land of his nativity. I gradually drew 
from him his name and history, and found that he had 



I 



VON blitzen's experiment. 205 

been all his life a resident of Gottingen, (where he was 
born and educated,) until a year or two since, when he 
came to this country for the purpose of satisfying his curi- 
osity and scientific tastes. He had traveled through a 
part of South America, Mexico, and the Southern States, 
and for several months had been living in the vicinity of 
the spot where I found him. Our conversation then turn- 
ed successively upon nearly all the departments of science, 
and even Phrenology and Mesmerism, in all of which he 
seemed quite at home, and highly enthusiastic ; then we 
ran through some German names of note — Kant, Leibnitz, 
Priessnitz, Spurzheim, Hahnemann, etc. — with the history 
and achievements of each, and the personal appearance of 
some of whom, he was well acquainted. He claimed for 
his father-land precedence in everything, and waxed more 
eloquent every moment in dilating about it ; in short, he 
seemed to be a universal genius, familiar with everything, 
and lauding to the skies the most contradictory theories 
and systems, (provided they were German,) and so san- 
guine, that he was ready to go off into rhapsody upon every 
wild, extravagant conjecture that has been, or can be, 
started. I came to the conclusion that he was possessed 
of credulity, and a passion for castle-building, amounting 
almost to monomania. 

After we had passed several hours in this manner, our 
conversation happened upon the magnetic telegraph, and I 
remarked, that one glory is yet reserved for genius to 
achieve, or rather lies beyond its utmost powers, and that 
is, to make electricity a vehicle for ourselves, as well as 



206 VON BLTTZEn's EXPERIiMENT. 

for our thoughts. The remark certaialy appeared to be 
quite electrical ia its effect upou him, for he sprang imme- 
diately to his feet, faced about, leaned eagerly towards me, 
and, laying one hand upon my shoulders, and taking off 
his antique spectacles with the other, held them at arm's 
length, while he puffed vigorously at his pipe, and stared 
at me with his merry, twinkling, gray eyes. At length he 
inquired, hesitatingly, if he could trust me, and receiving 
an affirmative reply, declared that he would reveal to me a 
wonderful secret, if I would follow him and never open my 
lips concerning what I should see or hear. 

So long had we protracted our conversation, that it was 
now late in the afternoon ; indeed, I had become so inter- 
ested in my new acquaintance and his decidedly original 
character, and had gathered such a fund of information 
from him, notwithstanding his eccentricities, that I hardly 
noted the lapse of time. The beams of the sinking sun 
slanted through the forest^ lighting up with transparent 
brilliance, or throwing into rich shade, the old trees — 

" Those green-robed senators of mighty -woods." 

We rose from the mossy, fallen pine-trunk, upon which 
we had been sitting, and having offered myself to carry a 
part of his scientific implements, my friend Von Blitzen 
filled and lighted his pipe, and taking the lead, trudged 
off towards his unknown home. He was, in truth, an in- 
defatigable little man, talking incessantly all the way in a 
highly transcendental and often finely imaginative strain, 
not without forgetting himself, occasionally, and striking 
off into a harangue of pure Grerman, the more unintelligi-. 



I 



VON blitzen's experiment. 207 



bio to me as I was often forced to dodge very suddenly the 
rebounding boughs and brushwood, through which he fear- 
lessly and rapidly pushed his way. 

At length we came to an open glade, and the sound of 
falling water arrested my attention. As we emerged from 
the wood, the open space discovered itself to be a small, 
narrow valley, surrounded by forest, and cradling a large 
stream, which fell at the upper extremity of the vale in a 
beautiful cascade. By the side of this, stood a ruined 
mill, overgrown with moss and weeds, its roof half fallen 
in, and the wheel, broken and crumbling, was unswung 
from its sockets and leaned against the building. Scatter- 
ed through the valley, were two or three untenanted, de- 
cayed log-huts ; the remains of a rude bridge spanned the 
stream ; the fences were broken down, and the road so en- 
cumbered with a growth of bushes, that although I after- 
wards found the locality to be but four miles from the 

thrifty village of , and in a country advancing in 

population like our own, yet, for some reason, this incipient 
settlement in the heart of the forest seemed to have been 
abandoned for many long years. 

Mynheer Yon Blltzen turned to me, and pointing to the 
ruined mill, exclaimed, " There, sir, is my domicile and 
laboratory, and I assure you it is more pregnant with dis- 
aster to steam engines, materia medica, and the entire pre- 
sent economy of civilization, than was the wooden horse of 
the Greeks with disaster to the Trojans !" Nodding as- 
sent to this very luminous remark, I followed him across 
the stream and into the mill ; we ascended a rickety flight 



208 VON blitzen's experiment. 

of stairs, and arriving at the door of a cbamber, the old 
man pulled a concealed string which lifted a bar within, 
and gave us entrance. I entered and beheld a scene that 
verily would have rejoiced the eyes of an alchemist of the 
Middle Ages, or the rustiest old antiquary of modern 
days ; indeed, had Von Blitzcn lived a few centuries ago, 
doubtless he would have died in search of the philosopher's 
stone or the alkahest, but happening upon our day most 
fortunately, he is destined, as will be seen, to more hon- 
orable and grateful memory. There is, after all, a spice 
of monomania — a tendency to wild, insane conjecture, nec- 
essary to form the great discoverer ; your safe, practical 
men would never have hit upon my friend Blundervich'a 
curious theory — much less have carried it out into actual 
experiment. Be this as it may, I was soon comfortably 
ensconced in his sanctum ; it was a small apartment, dingy 
with smoke and dust, abundantly draperied with cobwebs, 
filled with disorderly heaps of books, papers, minerals, 
dried reptiles, stuffed birds, squirrels, and one or two 
crocodiles — the results of my friend's American travels ; 
and upon rude shelves stood a variety of apparatus of 
private manufacture, such as a galvanic battery, formed 
from a detached bucket of the old mill-wheel ; and an 
electrical machine, constructed in part of a confectioner's 
glass-jar. But time forbids an extended description ; pos- 
terity must content itself with this brief notice of the man 
and his habitudes. 

In an hour or two, by united efforts, we had built a 
fire in the large chimney, made of unhewn stones ; dress- 



TON blitzen's experiment. 209 

ed, fried and dispatcLcd, with great gusto, some woodcock 
and pigeons — the result of Mynheer's excursions in the 
forest — together with farinaceous accompaniments, and 
several tankards of beer, the latter being of course an in- 
dispensable item to a German literatus. During all these 
processes, my host continued with ingenuous volubility to 
give me scraps of his history, especially of his wanderings 
in this country, concerning whose scenery, scientific treas- 
ures, and free government, he was rapturously enthusi- 
astic ; he also detailed how he had accidentally stumbled 
on the deserted mill, while hunting in the woods ; how, 
fancying the idea of a temporary hermit's life in this 
great wilderness, (for such he considered the whole coun- 
try) and also the better to conduct some experiments, on 
which he had long been pondering, he had taken posses- 
sion of the chamber, and moved several capacious trunks- 
full of his effects hither ; how the flume of the mill, by a 
little repairing, would assist admirably in his intended ex- 
periments in hydropathy, which science he was about to 
carry to unprecedented perfection, so as to make it not only 
a panacea for all human ills, but also a mighty step into a 
higher civilization and an earthly immortality ; how, final- 
ly, fearing some accident might befall himself or his abode, 
he*"had long wished for a trusty, sympathizing friend, to 
whom he could unveil the secret of his retreat and his pro- 
found plans of operation. In fact, my eccentric host, hav- 
ing almost entirely shut himself out from the society of 
his species for a long time, seemed to have accumulated an 
inexhaustible fund of conversation, the relieving himself of 



210 VON blitzen's experiment. 

which cost hitn no farther effort than to put his tongue for 
once in motion. 

The night, although in September, proved chill and 
stormy ; we renewed the not unwelcome fire, and, sup- 
plied each with a meerschaum, which Mynheer had brought 
from his father-land, and abundant store of the fragrant 
weed, procured far in the sunny South by himself, we 
threw ourselves back at our ease in roomy arm-chairs which 
my good philosopher, with a regard to luxury quite in- 
consistent with his amateur hermit-life, had constructed of 
loose boards, and lined with rich buffalo robes — trophies 
of a tour of his on the western prairies. 

And now did the immortal Blundervicii Von Blitzen 
first pause in portentous silence, and giving a few slow, 
magnificent puffs at his pipe, prepare to disclose the great 
secret of his soul — a revelation for which I had waited with 
continually sharpening curiosity. He began with a 
lengthy, formal eulogium on Mesmer, the father of the 
science of Animal Magnetism, and passed from him to 
Priessnitz, the great doctor of Grafeuberg ; after dwelling 
long and magniloquently on their achievements, he struck 
off into metaphysics, and grew so animated and transcen- 
dental at every puff of his meerschaum, that I could get 
little more than a confused impression of his meaning. T 
would gladly give his discourse verbatim, but it has van- 
ished from my memory like a gorgeous dream or sunset 
cloud, leaving only a meager residuum. He proceeded to 
state — and you must allow a half-hour for his own elabo- 
ration of each statement — that the principle of life is elec- 



TON blitzen's experiment. 211 

tricity, or magnetism, or electro-magnetism ; that the think- 
ing principle or soul inhabits this, and through it acts upon 
the muscular system ; that this connection of the immate- 
rial conscious essence with the most subtile form of matter 
— magnetism — gives to the latter defined form, permanen- 
cy and inseperable cohesion, while it still leaves it the elas- 
tic property of the fluid as generated by artificial appara- 
tus ; that death is a separation of the pure thinking princi- 
ple from the mass or body of magnetism, taking from it 
its permanent and internally cohesive property, and leaving 
it in the muscular structure, ever after to be divisible and 
evanescent, like the same fluid in its free state, uncom- 
pounded with mind, — in fact, entering hito that state ; that 
nothing now remains but to anticipate our dissolution by 
carefully separating or eliminating the entire cohesive mass 
of individual magnetism, thus keeping that and the soul in 
indissoluble connection, whereas, in the common course of 
things, there must eventually be a violent disruption of 
them, the escaping soul being unable to segregate the mag- 
netic or fluid body from the deceased muscular and osseous 
body ; that this separation of the two, leaving the soul still 
connected with the former, may be gradually and success- 
fully accomplished by a long-continued subjection to the 
"douche bath" employed in the Water Cure — in other 
words by exposing one's self to a stream of water, falling 
from a spout in the ceiling of a room, until every particle 
of the gross body of nerves, blood, flesh and bones, is worn 
away and carried off by the action of water, leaving the 
magnetic fluid body free, yet associated with the mind ; 



212 TON blitzen's expekiment. 

that in tliis state we can assume any sbape wlien passing 
through conducting substances, hut will invariably return 
to a form similar to that of our present visible bodies, while 
free to assume that form in a non-conducting receptacle, so 
that we can be elongated to a thread-like linear condition 
in passing through telegraphic wire, and be received at the 
termination of the wire in an air-tight, flexible shell, armor, 
dress, or bag, composed of a non-conductor, — for instance, 
pasteboard, silk, cotton, hair, india rubber, or glass, — the 
armor or sack being of the human shape, so that the mag- 
netic body may just fill and be fitted to it, and thus move 
about and act upon external matter as now ; the fluid body, 
by its association with the conscious, voluntary soul, still 
retaining its motive, active powers ! 

The profound Von Blitzen was now fairly in nuhibus, 
and, throwing back his head, and pufiing away more vehe- 
mently than ever, he launched into a glowing picture of the 
world, when our diseased, dying, and, with all the miracles 
of steam, slow-traveling race should be freed and washed 
clean of these aching bodies, and jumping instantaneously 
through the magnetic telegraph to any conceivable distance 
at pleasure ; he even suggested that we might possibly be 
able to travel to and from the sun and stars, through the 
magnetic ray of light detected by the prism. He consid- 
ered india rubber shells or dresses, moreover, better and 
more durable than any other non-conductor, — perhaps, as 
they had recently, in Europe, invented malleable glass, 
that substance might be made sufiiciently ductile and elas- 
tic, and, if so, a whole crowd would be perfectly transpa- 



VON blitzen's experiment. 231 

rent, and no man be in another's light ; and then he would 
have a great quantity and variety of these suits of armor, 
or rather artificial bodies, at every telegraph office, to re- 
ceive the spiritualized passengers, there to be left also when 
they departed through the wires ; and then, too, we might 
have artificial palates and lungs for talking, or one person 
might pass directly into another's hollow body, thus inter- 
mingling and interchanging thought by silent, immediate, 
felt communion, — certainly, with glass eyes, we should 
have no difficulty in seeing, as the £Oul is alone truly and 
all sensitive ; and as for the other senses, such powers would 
be for the most part superfluous, having no more occasion 
for fuel, food, nor, indeed, sleep ! Upon this, his thoughts 
returned to himself, and feeling, doubtless, that he had 
justly earned immortal fame by so splendid and benevolent 
a discovery, he exclaimed, "Ah, how will posterity then 
regard me?" Glad of some relief to an incontrollable 
sense of the ludicrous that had gradually crept over me, I 
sprang to my feet, and, seizing his hand, shouted, " Im- 
mortal Yon Blitzen ! immortal Von Blitzen !" 

Reassured by applause, our philosopher struck off at a 
fresh gallop upon Leibnitz' theory of monads, and Bosco- 
vich's conjecture that matter is only a congeries of attract- 
ing points, asserting his belief that these immaterial mon- 
ads or points might be made perfectly mobile, so that any 
body could be drawn out into a mathematical line, for con- 
venience in telegraphic transportation ; or, otherwise, that 
any substance, merchandise, houses, even sphinxes, obe- 
lisks and the Pyramids, as well as men and animals, might 



214 TON blitzen's experiment. 

be subjected to his thorougli-going Water Cure, and become 
so clarified from gross matter, so liquefied, or rather ethe- 
realized, as to be easily run through the electro-magnetic 
telegraph, and afterwards, returning by some occult law to 
their original shape, be re-endued with their visible and 
tangible properties by a possible process yet undiscovered, 
— a process similar to that of petrifaction, only more rapid. 
At this point, from the reaction of my long-sustained and 
now both gratified and disappointed curiosity, as well as in 
consequence of the lateness of the hour and the fatiguing 
influences of the day, I fairly laughed myself asleep. 

The sun had long been shining through chinks in the 
crazy old building, when I awoke and proceeded to arouse 
Mynheer Von Blitzen, who had probably talked himself 
asleep long after I became unconscious, and was now sno- 
ring away at as persevering and glorious a rate as be had 
talked. We breakfasted on cold pigeon and buiscuit, and 
before I resumed my journey, my host, as voluble concer- 
ning his great projects as on the night before, showed me 
the apparatus by which he intended to carry them into ef- 
fect. It consisted of a branch from the repaired flume of 
the mill, leading into his room, where it protruded from the 
ceiling and was stopped by a facet ; this was his inexhaust- 
ible " douchfe bath," which, by its continued action, was 
to disintegrate his visible from his magnetic inner body. 
Beneath this stood a large box, in which he was to sit ex- 
posed to the falling stream ; the bottom was perforated with 
holes to admit the escape of the water and of his material 
structure, as fast as it was worn away ; from this, ran a 



VON BLIIZEn'S EXPEKIME3ST. 215 

conducting wire, to receive his fluid body, so soon as it 
was wholly emancipated from the flesh ; the wire was 
stretched upon glass knobs in the walls, and, passing seve- 
ral times around the room, (to make the experiment more 
satisfactory, and give greater variety to his first telegraphic 
journey,) terminated in a suit of armor or artificial body, 
which was to take the place of his troublesome flesh and 
bones. This was simply a hollow pasteboard shell — a fac- 
simile of himself — jointed together with hinges of silk, (a 
non-conductor like the paper) and having glass eyes, where- 
from the etherealized Blitzen could look abroad ; it was 
also lined with tinfoil throughout, like a Leyden jar, — our 
experimenter not yet being certain whether the freed and 
soul-inhabited body of human magnetism would expand to 
its original shape in its former animal body, or would be- 
take itself to surfaces, like common electricity. 

After examining all these with a believing and inter- 
ested air, I bade my good friend adieu, promising to be at 
the mill just four months therefrom, by which time he 
calculated his experiment would be completed, so that he 
would be able to receive me in his glorified, pasteboard 
state. 

" Ah ! my fond philosopher," thought I, " your douche 
bath will give you a damper — a chilling dissuasion from 
your foolhardy purpose, long before you can carry it into 
execution." Ah ! little did I appreciate the self-denymg 
and quenchless courage of the devoted Von Blitzen, or 
think that I had shaken his honest fleshy hand for the 
last time 1 Nevertheless, as the mouths slipped away, I 



216 VON blitzen's experiment. 

could not but fancy bim sitting patiently under his 
cold, liard-pouring batb, and gradually dissected by the 
sharp, cutting torrent — first denuded of liis epidermis, 
next his muscles and veins laid bare and ghastly as a 
manikin, then a mere fibrous mass of nerves and liga- 
ments, then a skeleton, and, at last, every bone washed 
away, leaping ecstatically through the conducting wires 
of his telegraph. 

■5^ tJS- -JK ^ ^ ^ 

The snow was upon the ground, and sprinkled over the 
leafless forest-trees, when, punctual to my engagement, I 
turned aside from a journey through the same region, to 
visit the ruined mill. As I approached it alone, on a 
bright winter evening, I saw that the snow was untrodden 
in the little secluded valley and around the building, and 
I trembled to think that my worthy friend might long 
since have been frozen to death, or perished by some fatal 
accident. A cold tremor crept over me as I unbarred the 
chamber door, and, catching the sound of falling water, 
stepped into the chill, silent apartment ; then, turning 
around, I distinguished one after an other the chests, speci- 
mens, apparatus and furniture, in the same state that I 
saw them four months before. Finally, with a shudder, 
I cast a look into the perforated bos, .beneath the douche 
bath ; the water was pouring furiously down, and in a 
mass of foam at the bottom — lay the poor man's autic[ue 
spectacles ! 

The thought flashed through my mind that the daunt- 
less Yon Blitzen had fulfilled his resolution^ and involun- 



TON blitzen's experiment. 217 

tarily I looked around to find liim standing in his artifi- 
cial body. I was not disappointed, for at that instant he 
advanced from a corner of the room — positively advanced, 
not in his once venerable and merry-looking flesh and blood, 
but in the pasteboard shell, his step easy and firm, his glass 
eyes glowing with a blue, inner, electric light, and the 
paper breast and sides heaving and shaking, as if his 
spiritualized body were convulsed with laughter. I stag- 
gered with terror against the wall. 

Of my gradual recovery and feelings long tumultuous, 
I leave imagination to supply the detail, while I hasten to 
the conclusion of this most veritable disclosure. I was 
soon on the same familiar terms with this great modern dis- 
coverer, though not without a double awe from sitting in 
the presence of such a genius, and so metamorphosed and 
embodied. The figure, after extending its hollow h^d 
and pressing mine with silent congratulation, sat down and 
wrote some paragraphs to the effect that he (Von B.) had 
just substituted a few inches of small hair-wire, at a certain 
point in the telegraph, for the purpose of ascertaining 
through how small a conductor he could pass in his present 
state, having accomplished an instantaneous transit through 
the large wire when, first freed, the day before, from his 
former gross body ; also informing me that he had prepa- 
red another artificial body (connected with one end of the 
wire) into which, after making the tour of the chamber — 
in fact passing five times around — he would enter, leaving 
the armor he then inhabited to collapse and fall, immedi- 
ately on his darting into the end of the telegraph. Curi- 

10 



218 VON blitzen's experiment. 

ous to see this sudden change of place and dress, or rather 
body, I watched him as he passed the nearest end of the 
wire through the silken joints of his paper fingers ; in an 
instant his first receptacle collapsed ; the corresponding 
one at the other extremity was not moved and inflated by 
his presence ; no, the bit of intervening hair-wire upon the 
opposite wall, through which he trusted safely to pass, at 
the self-same instant glowed with white heat — melted — 
dropped ! I seized the light and ran to the spot ; an up- 
right beam of wood in the wall at that point was scorched 
and shivered to the floor ; I ran down into the lower apart- 
ment ; the same terrible eflTect was visible to the very 
ground, which, ploughed up a little way from the beam, 
lay all beyond undisturbed beneath the moonlit snow ! 
The daring philosopher had involuntarily escaped beyond 
recovery ; he had perished a sacrifice to science. Of 
course a Coroner's inquest was entirely out of the question. 



LEGEND OF THE LONE ISLAND. 



A FEW summers since, a friend and myself were walk- 
ing on the shore of Cayuga Lake, nearly opposite the 
small island that lies several miles above the outlet, and 
faces the thriving village of Union Springs. It is a circu- 
lar plot of ground, bordered with trees and rocks, a half 
mile from the main land, and lends a very picturesque va- 
riety to this part of the Lake. We were armed with stone- 
hammei's and baskets, and had undertaken the excursion 
for the purpose of collecting specimens of rocks and fos- 
sils — a pursuit for which my companion has an unbounded 
enthusiasm that often expressed itself in extravagant ex- 
clamations and gestures of joy, whenever he stumbled 
on an unusually perfect fragment of the various delicate 
petrifactions that abound in the limestone of the region. 

My mineralogical friend is a thorough theorist, with all 
the hypotheses of world-builders at his tongue's end, and, 



220 LEGEND OF THE LONE ISLAND. 

asit appeared to me, disposed to give unlimited credence 
to the most wild or contradictory suppositions. Like many 
men of similar tastes, lie is very skeptical concerning any 
supernatural explanation of things, and therefore he must 
indemnify himself for his unbelief in the common and 
reverent notions of people, by yielding to a ready super- 
stition in all the far more visionary theories of the scien- 
tific : indeed, it may be set down as a curious truth that 
the man of science — the dealer in "facts" — the stern 
questioner of Nature — is often more credulous than the 
ignorant. Having myself little passion for his favorite 
study, I was, at the moment, contending earnestly against 
his notions of the earth's creation, when we suddenly hap- 
pened upon an old man, sitting by the water's edge. He 
held in his hand a fishing rod, but it lay idly in the water, 
and he was intently gazing in the direction of the island, 
so that our approach was unnoticed until we shouted close 
by his deaf ears. Starting from his reverie, he entered 
into conversation, and before we left him, furnished some 
information which may be put in the form of a connected 
narrative. 

' 'I came into this country," said he, "just before the white 
settlements were planted here ; having ingratiated myself 
with the natives, I learned their language, lived according 
to their modes, and hunted and trapped from the Mohawk 
to Lake Erie. It is sixty years ago this season, since I 
came to this lake to winter with the Cayugas ; and just as 
you happened along, I was thinking of a tradition, told me 



LEGEND 07 THE LONE ISLAND. 221 

by the ladiaa mediciae-man, concerning that little island 
yonder. 

He said that the Cayugas and the Seneeas, a great 
many snows gone by, were at war. The latter tribe had 
trespassed on the fishing ground of the former, and 
killed some of the Cayugas in the ensuing quarrel, where- 
upon a general contest arose. 

The head-chief of the Cayugas was too aged and infirm 
to join a warlike expedition ; and therefore he, with his 
beautiful daughter Ulola, remained, with the women and 
children of the tribe, at home, while all the warriors left 
to go around by the outlet, and make a midnight attack on 
the Seneca village ; they were to lurk in the woods and 
seize the first opportunity. 

Meantime the boldest warrior of the enemy, with a few 
young comrades who wished to distinguish themselves in 
battle, unaware of tlie Cayuga expedition, came across 
the lake in canoes at night, and finding the camp unde- 
fended, fell upon it, and slaughtered many of the inhabit- 
ants. The old chief hurried away, only stopping to look 
in vain for his daughter. At sunrise, he reconnoiterd the 
camp, and finding the enemy gone, he returned with fear- 
ful presages of the death of the maiden ; but what was 
his surprise after all the fugitives were collected, to dis- 
cover no trace of Ulola. 

At sunset, the next day, the villagers were suddenly at- 
tracted by the sight of a boat leaving the opposite shore, 
and, soon after, another, as if in pursuit. As they neared 
this side, the aged chief saw that the second gained on the 



222 LEGEND OF THE LONE ISLAND. 

first, and it was not long before be recognized Ulola in the 
latter, together with a young brave who was betrothed to 
her, and who now rapidly made known to the father, by 
signs, that he had rescued the maiden from the Seneca 
camp, and was pursued by the same chief who had carried 
her away the night previous. It was only after the Cayu- 
ga's paddle broke in his grasp, that he signified this by 
those gestures so well understood among the Indians. So 
soon as the old man saw that all hope of escape had failed, 
agonized at the danger of his daughter, he raised his trem- 
bling hands to heaven, and silently prayed. Instantly the 
Cayuga canoe, with its lovely freight, was gently lifted 
from the water by an unseen power, and sailed safely 
through the air towards the shore ; and as suddenly the 
sky was darkened — a deafening roar and splash in the wa- 
ter were heard : and, when all had subsided, the pursuers 
were not to be seen, the lovers were in the arms of the old 
chief, and yonder island, for the first time, appeared above 
the surface. The Great Spirit had heard the prayer, torn 
that island from the hills, cast it into the lake, and buried 
the revengeful Seneca warrior beneath it. 

The old fisherman here ceased, only adding fervently : 
" and I believe it; the Indian traditions are as true as 
their word ; their legends are faithfully handed down from 
father to son, through centuries." 

" Fudge !" said my geological friend, pounding a boul- 
der with his hammer, — ' ' and yet there might have been 
some foundation for the story ; a meteoric stone may havo 
fallen, and the swell raised thereby, have upset a light ca- 



LEGEND OF THE LONE ISLAND. 223 

noc — such stones have fallen weighing thousands of 
pounds. And as for the island, it is evident from indica- 
tions at the head of the lake, that the water long; ago sub- 
sided from its original height by many feet, so that, about 
the time referred to, it is quite possible the island may have 
made its appearance, by reason of the decrease of the 
water." 

It would have been a waste of breath, to answer sucli 
a man in any other words than those of Campbell— 

" AVhea Science from Creation's face 

Enchantment's veil withdraws, 
What lovely visions yield their place, 

To cold material laws." 



MOULTING OF MIND. 



In all the forms of nature, we see change, progress, 
transition. The earth itself passed through chaotic, vol- 
canic, and various preparatory states, before it reached its 
highest organizations. And now, in the animal world, we 
see the moulting processes by which the bird casts its 
feathers, the serpent its slough, the deer his horns. In the 
human body, there are growth and changes corresponding 
somewhat to this ; and it is reasonable to think that there 
is a successive development, also, of the faculties of the 
mind. To some degree, we observe and are conscious of 
it, as an actual fact ; but men do not seem to regard it as 
a natural and necessary one, and to adapt our systems of 
early culture accordingly. It appears to be generally ta- 
ken for gi'anted, that any one or all of the mental capabili- 
ties can be developed in infancy, and thus on through ear- 
ly and later youth. This wrong assumption is perhaps the 
secret of the "forcing systems" of past and present times. 



MOULTING OF MIND. 225 

It is tlie unluckiest moment of more than one urclun's 
life, wlien, at the frolicking age of seven, having got the 
sing-song inflections of certain Latin nouns and verbs in 
his head, by overhearing others recite them, he suddenly 
astonishes his friends by repeating whole declensions of 
"musa," "hie," and " amo;" from that hour the little 
pedant is forced to personate a childish cobler, with a La- 
tin grammar for a lapstone, or a plaster Cupid, gazing in- 
tently on a plaster book, making really no more progress 
for years, than the first could be supposed to make 
in geology, or the last in literature. Of course, a 
hearty disgust is conceived for all books, including 
even those fairy tales, adventures, and travels, which 
«are as much the proper food for small people, as tops and 
hoops are their suitable playthings instead of saws, spades, 
and ploughs. Such an unfortunate being seldom awakes 
to the necessity of thoroughly fitting himself for colleo'e ; 
or if, a year or two before that long anticipated event, he 
does arouse to the work, he may well say with ^neas — 
" You renew my grief, Queen." He has slept away 
his childhood over unsuitable books, and will sleep away 
his collegehood over the same, when the proper time to 
study them has come ; and, besides, having never had time 
and encouragement to exhaust the glorious fields of choice, 
juvenile romance, he has still the ungratified yearnings of 
a child, and will plunge indiscriminately into the sea of 
popular fiction. 

Happily there is now a growing conviction, that a boy 
ought never to look into a Latin or Greek grammar or lex- 

10* 



225 MOULTING OF MIND. 

icon, until two or three years before he eaters the univer- 
sity ; then he will take them up freshly, and with a zest 
that will outweigh any minor disadvantages of postponing 
so long his direct preparation. We want no drilling Blim- 
bers and idiotic Toots — no more of the obsolete " hot-house 
system." There are natural and successive, transitional 
states of the growing mind. There is, first, the age of im- 
pressions — of fleeting images, when the jumbled words of 
Mother Groose's Melodies are as good as anything ; nay, 
even then, the imagination — that most divine faculty — may 
be nourished, as well as quickness of perception, which is 
the first power to be acquired ; the infant eye may be 
taught to "glance from heaven to earth, from earth to 
heaven," as it, in fancy, follows the old woman " sweep'*' 
ing the sky," the cow jumping " over the moon," and the 
man " into a barberry bush." Then comes the period of 
pure fancy, (the brain being still too weak to tax the mem- 
ory much,) and the child should wander at will in all the 
Arcadian scenes of romance, and load itself with the wealth 
of all beautiful things ; let the " Arabian Nights," " Gul- 
liver," Stc, be the text-books, — afterwards veritable trav- 
els and biography. As youth dawns and advances, and 
the wayward fancy of childhood gives place to higher 
thoughts and stronger power of retention, history and poe- 
try will best meet the intellectual want. Thus, a world-wide 
curiosity being in a measure sated, and thought awakened, 
it will be time enough to unfold the necessity and use of 
drier and severer studies — to enter on language and the 
middle branches .of matheiuatias, taking it for granted that 



MOULTING OF MIND, 227 

common school books have been mastered, at any time 
during the long previous period. The end, the use of 
things, must be, to some extent, seen and felt, before the 
means — the indispensable disciplinary branches of study, 
can be appreciated ; and it is better that reflection and fan- 
cy be germinated before, than simultaneously with these ; 
the attention will be less diverted. Until these powers are 
more or less developed, the boy is an animal — nothing hu- 
man but the form ; and an animal cannot be a true linguist 
or mathematician, however it may learn to repeat " dead 
vocables," as Carlyle calls them. The man, when at last 
born in College, of course makes a desperate dive for the 
Libraries ; before that, he might as well have been a quad- 
ruped, and eaten grass. Nor need it be feared that the 
mind will become dissipated in childhood by " light" read- 
ing, (which is surely better than dark reading) ; at worst, 
better be it dissipated, than have none to dissipate ; or first 
get one at college, to become so afterwards. Let children 
be children, and then men will be men. 

This then would be our successive genesis of mind, were 
there room to develop it — first perception, then fancy, 
next memory, and lastly reason — an order that is exactly 
inverted so far as our observation goes ; children are made 
to begin as philosophers and come out, in the end, fools. 

The same remarks will apply to the study of the sci- 
ences. It is the boast of our day that the child is familiar 
with the results of a life of philosophical investigation — that 
a school-boy is wise as Newton. Every thing is simpli- 
fied ; Astronomy, Chemistry, Q-eology, and Mental, Moral, 



228 MOULTING OF MIND. 

and Natural Pbilosophy are taught in nice little primers. 
But has not many a man regretted that he ever heard of 
the ologies — the sciences, before he took up Olmsted, Lyell, 
Stewart, and Upham ? All the freshness of a new field of 
knowledge is gone, before he comes to his Academical and 
Collegiate vade meciims ; and a conceit of knowledge is 
generated, when, in fact, the " outlines" and " elements" 
are not at all mastered. The prevailing system in common 
schools and academies may be well enough for those who 
are not designed for the university ; but for those who are, 
we beg that every thing come in its own order. Let not 
an infant be required to " stand up and tell the gentleman 
what he knoios ;" let it tell what it sees and bears; let the 
child tell you a story — the youth what of men and things 
be has read ; in later youth, let him conjugate and transs- 
late ; let the Junior talk of sciences, and the Senior ana- 
lyze, generalize, and grow exceeding wise concerning ''the 
Will," " volitions," and " subjective and objective states." 
There is a time for everything. Above all, there must be 
time for physical development ; and so that a strong man- 
hood be knit and hardened, it matters but little, compara- 
tively, what finds lodgment in the head. In urging the 
foregoing considerations, our chief point is, that such a 
range of thought be opened to the mind as may be homo- 
geneous to its years and the distinguishing capacity of its 
several periods ; not a higher range, however it may be 
lowered and simplified to the comprehension. And per- 
haps the soul'.s own sentiment, if left free ,and supplied 



MOULTING OP MIND. 229 

with the means, will direct better than any formal system. 
There may be more uniform and universal education at tins 
day, but it is doubtful whether many minds are now suffer- 
ed to expand into their full stature and native proportions. 
We " grow" them, and therefore do not let them grow. 

And as for the imagination, often so carefully repressed, 
it can be proved to be the most important and lofty power 
of the soul — the faculty that makes all acquisitions our 
own, leads on to discoveries, projects itself in business 
schemes, and gives shape and life to the driest mental pro- 
ductions that yet are of organic growth. It is not the 
dreaming power alone ; nor the exclusive gift of creative 
genius. It is both the steam and engineer of the whole 
mental machine ; and this truth will yet be appreciated. 

In connection with this subject, we have a thought or 
two on systems of reading. We have known several exem- 
plary young men, who, from boyhood, religiously followed 
a line of reading prescribed by some benevolent parent, 
guardian, teacher, or pastor, and, afterwards, by a profes- 
sor or president ; and sure we are, it extinguished every 
spark, if ever they had any, of liberality and originality. 
They are now not producers, nor hardly manufacturers of 
thought, though moving in professional life ; mere buyers 
and sellers of second-hand ideas, they cannot afl&rm that 
they have a soul of their own. We cannot look at them 
as living men of flesh and blood, but only as walking broad- 
cloth satchels filled with " Index Rerums" and " Elegant 
Extracts;" and we are, every moment, in nervous expec- 
tation of seeing their buttons fly off, and the whole eflfigy of 



"30 JIOLLTING OF MIND. 

a man tumble into a ruinous heap of text-books. There 
are only two legitimate ways to read ; one is to read up, 
or "cram" on some subject, concerning which the curiosity 
is excited, or the individual intends to write ; the other 
plan (and it must be followed in all odd hours) is, to have 
no plan, but browse upon the printed leaves. In both of 
these ways, and these only — will the ideas of an author 
" bite in" the mind, and remain fixed, like an etching on 
a copper-plate ; and by the first mode, especially, will 
thought be fused and become incorporated with the mind, 
so as to be " living and ductile," the mind's own. A bare 
course of reading does not excite the mind's activities ; 
only fills it with lumber. 



THE UNIVERSE OF SPIRIT. 



We livo in a world of sights, sounds, and surfaces. 
We awake in the morning, and look forth on this familiar 
earth ; the same hills and trees, the same streets and 
spires, the same homes and friends, are all here even as 
yesterday ; the buzz of life arouses about us, and the world 
and we move on together, until another hour of rest re- 
turns, and we sink again into the oblivion of slumber. 
So goes a day ; so goes a life. At intervals, indeed, our 
thoughts wander over the round earth ; we think of other 
lands, — lands of tropical suns, or artic snows ; we think 
of far off mountains, towering and mist-encircled ; we 
think of the sleeping silver or the heaving sapphire of 
distant seas. Niu;ht glooms on, and the same cold moon 
sails along the sky ; the same stars are all out, fixed in 
the blue dome above. 

Sometimes we pause and wonder at those countless 



232 THE UNIVERSE OF SPIRIT. 

worlds. We call to mind the revelations of modern 
science, and endeavor to grasp and realize some of its vast 
conceptions. We pusli off, in fancy, those giant suns — off 
to where they should be, and yet appear the mere needle- 
points they seem ; we call up their viewless planets, and 
their viewless satellites, moving in mighty procession 
around each faint, trembling star. Then, perhaps, we 
glance over the whole sparkling heaven ; we summon up 
the other starry hemisphere below our horizon, — far down 
beneath this solid globe, and, completing the enormous 
sphere, we just begin to realize that we too are standing 
on a little star, and swinging free in immensity ! But 
we cannot stop here ; when we have launched into infinity, 
we must yield ourselves to the dizzy impetus. We must 
go out, in telescopic vision, far beyond our natural sight, 
until we have past the last shining sentinel of our firma- 
ment of suns, and then, gathering up this mass of single 
fixed stars in one superhuman grasp, dash them behind us 
as a small, insignificant cluster, while we whirl away to- 
ward those thousand other scattered firmaments, which now 
appear, through the most powerful instruments even, like 
glittering dust or shreds of luminous vapor. 

But why pursue this flight ? We have often winged 
along this fearful track, as upon the " wings of the morn- 
ing;" we have often mounted toward that awful Throne, 
where One sits in a centre which knows no circumference. 
We have wheeled close to those suns and sun-lit worlds, 
which teem with life and luxuriance, and resound with 
melody. But, in all this, we only live a few moments in 



THE UNIVERSE OF SPIRIT. 233 

a universe of sense, even, as before remarked, we daily 
live in a world of sense. And are these objects all ? 
Must we return from these heavenward flights, as if we 
had beneld every kind of creation ? Granting that this 
world is a specimen, in many respects, of other worlds ; 
granting that those other worlds are endlessly multiplied 
and reach on forever ; still, has Omnipotent Love and 
Wisdom gone forth in no other manner than in building, 
adorning, and peopling a visible, material universe ? 
Have we no other mysterious volume to open, after we 
have read this familiar page — after we have wandered 
even through the whole infinite library of created worlds ? 
— a library of which every star is a gold-clasped volume, 
the solar systems its alcoves, its galleries firmaments of 
suns, and its halls the boundless planetary spaces. 

Yes, there is such a volume, just as vast, and still more 
incomprehensible. A heavy clasp is upon it, which the 
iron hand of Death only can break. But, its Almighty 
Author has in many ways, dimly, yet surely, foreshadow- 
ed to us its wonderful contents. He has made frequent 
allusions to that volume in another,-r-in his written Word, 
which is a lamp to our feet in this darkling path, but 
across whose clear, steady beam there often flit the shadowy 
forms of a spirit-universe. Not only do we read in the 
inspired histories of God's dealings with men, and the rise 
and fall of human monarchies ; not only do we hear the 
tramp of earth's embattled hosts, or the solemn responses 
of covenanting Israel ; not only do we see the flashings of 
Sinai, or the scenes of Calvary ; but all along, from Gene- 



234 THE UNIVERSE OF SPIRIT. 

sis to Kevelations, we catch the rustle of angelic wings, 
the faint echo of a warfare among principalities and pow- 
ers in heavenly places ; and we are startled at the muffled 
tread of the Tempter and his cohorts of fallen atigels — 
once with Christ, we behold, him, " as lightning fall from 
heaven !" We are told of ministering spirits, of legions 
of demons, of re-appearing saints, of swift messengers and 
flaming heralds, whose number is "■ ten thousand times 
ten thousand and thousands of thousands." So, often, do 
supernatural beings mingle in the scenes of Holy Eecord ; 
so often do we get glimpses of their long ai-ray and vanish- 
ing ranks, that we may rest assured that the unseen ten- 
ants of this atmosphere are more in number than the men 
who breathe it ; nay, that there is a universe of spirit co- 
extensive with the universe of matter. 

But Revelation has not given us the only intimations of 
this vast, unknown system of life and intelligence, perva- 
ding the naturalist's earth and the astronomer's heavens. 
It is not necessary now to prove, as can easily be done, 
that it is possible that such beings, possessed of a true cor- 
poreity, of a refined nature, but of surpassing physical 
powers, may exist all around us, unknown to mortal ear 
or eye. Those invisible, intangible substances in nature, 
whose inconceivable force is a matter of daily observation, 
are sufficient analogies. There is something which sports 
with weight and ponderous bodies as with a feather or a 
phantom, laughs at time and space, and hurls scorn at the 
mightiest mechanical inventions : but that something can- 
not itself be grasped and held up to the human eye ; it can- 



TUE UNIVEKSE OF SPIRIT. 236 

not be perceived by any sense. So may other material 
forms and embodied intelligencies, capable of a velocity of 
movement, and wielding a degree of power transcending 
the miracles of magnetism and electricity, make a world of 
lofty action and enjoyment about us, and yet remain un- 
cognizable to the human senses. 

They may exist, and that they do, it is only necessary 
to look at God's creation so far as it is already perceptible. 
Shall the all-wise and benevolent Power have crowded ev- 
ery drop of water, every acre of the ocean, every ounce of 
our blood, the surface and every pore of our bodies, and all 
substances with a swarming microscopic life, and shall He 
have left the boundless air, the long tracks of space, the 
interminable vistas of infinity, mere wastes and deserts, 
unpeopled, unproductive, save where, here and there, a 
planet is thrown in like a solitary oasis. Even the deserts 
of earth are no wastes ; they are the palace floors of the 
outlawed, but free and kingly Arab. No, there are no 
solitudes on earth, or in the waters under the earth, or in 
high heaven. Yonder blue, sunny depths, the interspa- 
ces between the planets — those seemingly empty saloons, 
lit up with their starry chandeliers, are not void, cheer- 
less, uninhabitable vacancies; they are not vast Dead Seas 
of space, where no beauty and life can have its element. 

The very vibrations of that light which reveals to us 
the glowing skies — those vibrations which roll their tides 
of effulgence across from one planetary shore to another 
— evince a material medium or fluid suffused through all 
space — a medium which all analogy pronounces to be as 



236 THE UNIVERSE OF SPIRIT. 

densely peopled as the spinning spheres it buoys up and 
binds together ; and peopled, too, with beings of superhuman 
intellect and power, who interest themselves in the affairs 
of all worlds ; beings of Christ-like compassion or Satanic 
malignity, who wage a war, the stake whereof is the human 
soul ; beings who encamp around about the sacramental 
host of earth, or whisper blasphemy into the ready ear, and 
lay fearful snares and stratagems for unguarded feet. 

These analogies are sufficient; the Bible testimony is suffi- 
cient. It is enough, too, to ask, where have the spirits of 
the departed gone ? Have those who timely returned to 
their loyalty to God, realized none of the noblest aspirations 
of the human intellect ? Are they imprisoned in some so- 
lar or lunar Paradise, who, even in this life, were permit- 
tod to push the firm outposts of science far into infinity, and 
who yearned to behold more manifestations of the perfec- 
tions of their adored Creator throughout his wide domains ? 
These instincts are not to be set at nought ; they are anoth- 
er written word of God. The whole universe may be the 
christian's heaven, and the redeemed souls of sixty centu- 
ries may now be reveling in those illimitable fields of won- 
der and praise, in company with the higher orders of spir- 
itual being. 

But these are not our only instincts; man not only feels 
that he is to have a part in the great range of creation, 
which his God-given powers have so far penetrated and mea- 
sured ; but there is also a deep, universal persuasion that 
an unseen but real world exists all about us. We may not 
think of it in any very definite form, and if any definite 



THE UNIVERSE OF SPIRIT. 237 

form is thought of, it may be only a fancy. But the gen- 
eral fact is engraven in our very mental constitution. 

The images of supernatural beauty and terror, that flit 
past us in our moments of solitary meditation, have a cause 
beyond the accidental grouping of previous conceptions. 
However fanciful their combinations, they nevertheless 
point, with the sure finger of instinct, both to a more terri- 
ble and a fairer scene than this. We are not competent to 
conceive of more awful or glorious possibilities than our 
Creator has already achieved in reality. The superstitious 
wonders and fears of men have a voice ; the infernal and 
the celestial picturings of the imagination have a voice. 
When we cast a shuddering glance behind us in a lonely, 
nightly walk, when we close our eyes only to look upon a 
train of fearful iraag^ it is bat a foreshadowing of a stern 
reality, upon which we are yet to gaze either as spectators 
or participants. 

The brighter universe of spirit, also, has its trembling 
reflection in the mirror of the soul. When we drink in a 
tide of gushing song or instrumental melody, how are we 
wafted away upon those waves of sound, as into a heaven 
of another and brighter glory than that of suns, or moons, 
or stars. When we behold the gorgeous bow spanning a 
vanishing storm ; or when we stand upon the quaking altar 
of a cataract, and watch its misty incense ascending like 
archangelic drapery to the sky, how does the soul struggle 
as if to snap its chains and spring forth into infinity ; what 
visions of beauty, power, majesty, surpassing anything we 
know of earth or planet, break upon the soul. While we 



238 THE UNIVERSE OF SPIKIT. 

contemplate tlie curious forms and dazzling tints of sunset- 
clouds, with their far-reaching recesses and long perspec- 
tive of iinearthly grandeur, and trace out with ravisliedeye 
those towers of silver, Alps of amethyst, and seas of sap- 
phire, we do not instinctively reach forward to that hidden 
universe of purer matter, nobler intellect, grander shapes, 
which now, for a time, unconsciously to us, is interlocked 
with this initiatory one of grosser form and substance. 
Yes, could our eyes now be empowered to behold the vast 
spiritual realm which, doubtless, occupies all space about 
us, unprepared as our weak senses are for the terrific beau- 
ty of such a disclosure, we would be overwhelmed with the 
blinding glory of so many seraphic forms pausing or hover- 
ino" over us, or, in their quick transit hither and thither, 
seeming like interlaced threads ofWightning — near us, 
broad, vivid, and distinct, but fading into an even glow be- 
yond — far beyond where we could not single out one of 
those wings of radiant light, which, if they were dense 
enough to beat the common air, would give forth a continu- 
ous peal as of a thousand blended Niagaras. And the time 
speeds apace, when the strong vision of the disembodied 
spirit, and afterward, the strong eye of the risen body, 
shall behold the unseen and eternal, as clearly and vivid- 
ly as the natural eye now reflects, and the telescopic lens 
now transmits, the seen and temporal, The universe of 
Astronomy then will be the dream — the universe of Faith, 
the reality. 



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